Cormelle
by ComsatAngel
Summary: The 8th Doctor helps colonists fight off the evil multinational IMC. Five hundred years later the 10th Doctor helps them against an even worse enemy - themselves. But the perfect city-state of Cormelle doesn't need help. Because it's perfect. Or - is it
1. Chapter 1

CORMELLE

CORMELLE

PART ONE: "- ANOTHER COUNTRY"

CHAPTER ONE

The Doctor leant back against the bole of a tree, closed his eyes and relaxed, sitting cross-legged in a yoga position. From here, a knoll slightly higher than the surrounding jungle, he could see for miles in every direction, should he care to open his eyes.

The only reason he might have wanted to do so would have been to check on the presence of his young female companion. Not for fear of her personal safety; the largest form of animal life living here were small lizards, barely a foot long, that thrived on insects and other, smaller animals. No poisonous plants or insects, good weather, no people.

No, he wasn't worried on that account. He did wonder how long she would feel happy, given her urban upbringing. At least she'd left the radio in the TARDIS, and they'd been here a couple of days already, which marked progress of a sort. Once she got restless, however, there was no telling what mischief she might get up to. Sometimes her ability to find trouble rivalled that of his own –

A long roll of thunder came echoing from the south, causing the Time Lord to frown and open his eyes. Bad weather? Not here at present. The skies overhead were serenely blue, or purple if you saw into the ultra-violet. He closed his eyes again and started a little formal contemplation, glad that there were no distractions.

They were both here as a method of getting away from their recent past, and an epic struggle with the Daleks in London. Never happy at witnessing conflict, let alone being part of it, the Doctor had nevertheless found himself manipulating human beings into what he termed "damage-limitation", and being positively Machiavellian about it.

Here was a long way from London, both in terms of space and time. The date was the year 2500 AD, and the place was a planet known as Hargreave's Fall. He'd heard it termed "Paradise in search of a population", and finally decided to have a look at first hand.

It was indeed an unspoiled and idyllic planet; lush tropical jungles, giant raging rivers, rolling grasslands, vast canyons and a riot of colour everywhere. A person could spend a lifetime exploring and never see another human being, since there weren't any there.

Yet. His memory about the settlement was rather hazy, but he knew that humans settled here eventually, as they did anywhere remotely inhabitable.

The Doctor sighed. Humans! A likeable species, but they did have their downside.

For another hour he sat, looking like a man asleep, thinking, until a shadow fell upon him.

'Wakey-wakey!' said a sing-song female voice.

'I wasn't asleep,' the Doctor gently chided.

'Could have fooled me,' said the girl. 'Blimey, aren't you hungry yet, Professor?'

The Doctor stood upright from his cross-legged position in a manner that a normal person, or a human being, would have found impossible.

'Champing for a bacon butty, eh?' he joked. 'Come on, and I'll show you how to fish with an umbrella.'

He stuck out an arm and Ace took it, allowing him to lead them to the small brook that ran near the TARDIS.

'Why is this place called "Hargreave's Fall"?' she asked over dinner, taking time to spit bones out into the campfire, where they sizzled briefly. 'I don't see any sign of Hargreave, falling or anyotherwise.'

The Doctor delicately nibbled at the fillet in his hands. In addition to the fish, he'd grilled what looked like dark green tomatoes, and had even managed to dig up some tubers that looked like potatoes.

'Captain Johnathon Jacob Hargreaves, famous interstellar explorer. Since he discovered this planet, he had the privilege of naming it, even if his logic in adding the "Fall" part of the name is lost. Actually, I think he's distantly related to you.'

'Cool!' mouthed Ace, around her pseudo-potato. 'Mmm, these are nice. Kind of yammy.'

Once again the distant sound of thunder came echoing up from the south, making both of them look to the skies.

'You'll need that brolly for keeping the rain off,' remarked Ace, noticing a frown crease the Doctor's brow for a moment. Then the black look was gone, so quickly the young woman wondered if she'd imagined it.

'Yes. Yes, I suppose I will. Now, since we have satisfied the inner man, how about a walk? Helps the digestion.'

Which, Ace ruefully reflected, was probably about the closest her travelling companion ever got to referring about her weight; not that she was bothered, really, seriously. She stood up and brushed blades of grass off her black denims.

'Come on then. Think we'll see more of those brill lizards again?'

'Only if we're quiet!' cautioned the small man, putting a finger to his lips. He struck out down the knoll, into the wall of jungle vegetation that ran back to distant mountains. Chirping insects chorused alongside their trail, in a twilight world where occasional sunbeams were the main source of light. Under the triple canopy it felt much cooler than it had on the knoll, and Ace found her vision took time to adapt.

Not heading anywhere in particular, their path took them towards the sound of running water, until they emerged after an hour on the banks of a wide, deep and fast-running river that rushed over scattered rocky outcrops in mid-stream. A short distance away came an incessant rolling rumble, where spray and rainbows were visible.

Curious, the Doctor strolled carefully along the riverbank, where animal tracks had worn a path. Ace amused herself by skimming stones across the river.

Their investigation was rewarded by an awesome sight when they reached what had been a fault-line across the landscape: the mighty river on their left plunged over the lip of a waterfall half a mile high in a ceaseless torrent, generating a spray that hung over them like clouds. Unable to go any further, they stood and examined the chasm in front of them, as impressive as the Niagra Falls, but festooned on all sides with jungle that softened the harsh outlines of solid rock.

A strident bird, squawking madly and trailing a plume of bright feathers, erupted from bushes ahead of them, seemingly angry at the alien intruders.

'This is way cool!' enthused Ace, having to speak loudly over the waterfall's noise.

She meant it: of course, she realised, eventually the thrill of a new world would pall and she'd want to get back to civilisation, electricity, cornflakes and running water, but in the here and now the sheer novelty of an unspoilt paradise filled her with wonder.

After getting quite damp from airborne spray the pair decided to move on, getting back into more jungle and eventually finding a clearing where the twin suns overhead helped to dry and cheer them. By then Ace was feeling the first delicate twinges of hunger, which led her to make a few subtle hints. The Doctor, of course, immediately understood what she meant.

'We can head back to the TARDIS now. Let me think, what did we have in the larder?'

Ace sighed and shook her head. One problem she had with the Doctor was telling the difference between his joking and his being serious. He really might have forgotten that the fridge was empty, or he might be gently mocking her focussing on food and the less-than-ethereal contemplation of a fully-stocked kitchen.

'Haricot beans. I know I left them to steep overnight. Did I scarify the quelmeuce?'

'The what?' replied Ace, trying her best to keep her trouser cuffs out of the dirt.

' "Quelmeuce". Gallifreyan savoury vegetables. Delicious hot or cold – er, that is, if you remember to scarify them _first_.'

With a roll of the eyes and a toss of the head, Ace consigned Quelmeuce to the History Bin. Scarify?

'You're not making these up, are you?' she asked, that old, old fear of being mocked coming back temporarily.

'Ace!' chided the Doctor, his Scottish brogue coming across particularly clearly. 'Have I not written a book on Time Lord cuisine?'

For a second she had to concentrate on hauling herself up a selection of vines, at a point where their non-existent path traversed a hillside. A full minute passed before she could reply.

'Eh? Professor, I have no idea!'

'Or have I?' he replied. 'Is that yet to come?'

In fact the TARDIS had a fairly full larder, and Ace pigged-out on a plate of beans-on-toast, with scrambled eggs and Marmite made up as a drink. They were outside, sat under a marquee that had been dragged from the depths of the TARDIS; adorned with embroidery, in the shape of swords and shields, it had an air of faded grandeur, as well it might have, being a relic of the seventeenth century Polish court.

The Doctor busied himself with the dirty plates, allowing Ace to sit back and feel both satisfied and full. Having stuffed herself with food, she felt more able to sit back and look at the skies, where one sun had already set, and the second was close to the horizon. The shadows thus created were strange, and the not-quite-dusk felt equally as odd, with a set of semi-nocturnal insects now buzzing about.

She cocked her head instinctively, leaning to one side to hear better, since one particular buzz sounded unusually metallic and artificial. Was it a peculiar insect? It seemed to be coming from a long way off, which implied either strange acoustics or a big noise in the distance – which is when she noticed the distant purple glow, faint and fading, way off to the south. By the time the Doctor reappeared, the glow had gone, and she didn't think it important enough to mention.

Whilst the novelty of Hargreave's Fall hadn't worn off yet, the next morning brought excitement enough to keep Ace bubbling.

The half-dawn (as only one sun was in the sky) had been interrupted by a whiplash that made the ground shudder. Since the Doctor was shaving, Ace had darted out of the TARDIS, still wearing pyjamas, to see what the commotion was.

In the cobalt sky above, a needle-nosed spaceship with the angular and deadly lines of a hornet tore overhead, heading south and leaving a trail of sonic booms in it's wake. The young woman stared at it in a combination of appreciation and disbelief – who said this world was uninhabited?

'Wicked!' she muttered, before realising that the skies above were now no longer empty. What could only be described as an armada of spaceships were now spiralling down on trajectories that would take them to the northern hemisphere. Ace gave up after counting twenty of the sleek black shapes.

'Er – Doctor?' she called, uncertain about the nature of what she was witnessing. 'Doctor!' she called again, louder and with more feeling.

'What is it?' grumbled the Time Lord, still washing his face and reluctant to interrupt his ablutions.

'You need to come and see this,' called Ace, without specifying what "this" actually was.

Patting his face dry with a towel, the Doctor emerged into daylight and whistled in surprise at the metal-filled heavens. He twirled his hat and made it roll up his arm before flipping it onto his head.

'Colonists,' he explained. 'Ten, twenty, forty, eighty three. Eighty three ships.'

Ace couldn't manage to count more than a dozen as the glinting shapes flitted north and out of sight.

'Temporal slippage,' muttered the Doctor, staring at the ground. 'Must be.' He patted the TARDIS's side. 'You need a tune-up, old girl.'

'Have we arrived later than you expected?'

'Yes, by about six or seven years. Oh well, the peace was nice whilst it lasted.'

'Who are that lot, then?'

'Colonists, Ace. Oh – I see what you mean. Your kith and kind: humans.'

Roger Cormelle gripped the twin control columns, trying to keep the shuddering spaceship in the optimal green zone for attitude and altitude.

'Should we be shaking this much?' asked his second-in-command, looking and sounding worried.

'I don't know!' snapped Roger. 'This – sorry, hon.' His second-in-command was also his wife. 'We've only been on the simulator and this is real life.'

Captain, mission inspirer and pilot, Roger told himself. As much of a pilot as ninety days training could make you.

The big attitude monitor showed the spaceship orientation shifting close to the amber zone, forcing him to wrestle the controls again, and there wasn't any poetic licence about "wrestle". A lot of the technology here was ancient because of cost and redundancy and some controls were still fly-by-wire.

The ship shuddered again, then abruptly flew straight and level.

'Clear air turbulence,' muttered Roger to himself. 'Evan, send out a general call to the rest of the ships and warn them about it.'

As lead ship, he'd be generating turbulence himself, which would buffet every single ship coming behind.

Damn! He silently cursed. Real life was completely different from the simulators!

Evan, the communications technician, hastily sent out a terse warning to the other ships, then turned back to give Roger a thumbs-up.

'I've got the landing signal from the beacon, ten by ten. ETA is three minutes.'

Roger's mood immediately lightened. Three minutes! Excellent!

His wife sighed in relief.

'Thank the heavens above and below. I had visions of the ship falling apart in mid-air.'

Roger gave her a warm and knowing look.

'Give the Chinese a bit of credit! That only happens when we land.'

Roger dialled through to the central tannoy system, speaking to the passengers.

'Your attention, please, this is Roger – Captain Cormelle – speaking. I shall only be a pilot for about two minutes longer. We are coming in to land!'

The cheer that went up from the revived passengers could be heard even up on the bridge.

Sixty seconds from landing, with predictable atmospheric conditions and that same atmosphere to work against, the big colony ships began to go into automatic, pre-programmed landing routines. Roger saw the green lights on his instrument panels start to flash, telling him that he had now surrendered control to the ships AAI. This part of the whole exodus was one of the most dangerous, with big vessels having to manoeuevre in close proximity. Roger felt more confidence in the computer-controlled systems than his own piloting – he was, after all, a product of the QVL Course (Short), which qualified him as the lowest form of Starship Pilot – Conversion Class.

The final descent, laying the ship horizontally, consumed too much of the fuel remaining and they dropped for at least ten centimetres, coming down to earth with a rending crunch.

No – not "earth", Roger corrected himself. Hargreave's Fall!

'Hoooray!' he yelled, leaning back in his contoured acceleration chair and shouting at the ceiling. 'Home!'

Once that incredible realisation had dawned, the colonists had only begun to nibble at the edges of an enormous task.

Yes, they had landed. From that, they had to begin their colonisation effort, which owed little to adrenaline and everything to organisation. Firstly, only seventy four of the colony ships were the Chinese Han-Sho Conversion Class vessels. The remaining nine were Green Line cargo hauliers, massive vessels of sixty thousand tonnes deadweight that carried the expedition's heavy plant. The Han-Sho could be left where they landed; the cargo hauliers had to be accorded take-off paths.

For Roger, the first breath of air on their new planet had a special savour – he inhaled a small fly and coughed, spluttering, for nearly half a minute. Red-eyed and rasping, he nevertheless managed a huge smile for his bridge crew, who were assembled at the side of the descent ramp.

'Ola Halola! That was embarrassing! People, welcome to our new world, and everything that goes with it. Suns, moons, landscape, wildlife and opportunity.'

His wife silently offered a bottle of water. With good grace, Roger took a sip and carried on.

'We have made landfall here, at an appropriately selected spot, and are going to make this part of the Fall our Original Site. People in decades to come will make a pilgrimage to this spot to see where Earth's pioneer's landed.'

Unworthy, but he felt like adding a memo about the expense of getting Earth's pioneers out here, at the cost of his entire (and very considerable) fortune. He strolled down the ramp, looking out across the gigantic campsite, which measured two kilometres across.

Already, the Conversion starships were being broken up from the inside. From huge ramps at the bows of the hauliers, streams of mechanical plant were being landed. Autonomous technology – the High-Function Design, Mechanised – made their way across the alien landscape to begin altering it in the pursuit of human endeavour.

With only a twinge of regret, Roger turned to look at the Han-Sho. In keeping with the transient nature of the vehicle, it only had a number, not a name: Number 1. They hadn't wanted to feel any attachment to their spaceships.

'No losses en route,' remarked one of the communication officers from a haulier, his voice coming over on Roger's belt mike. 'You and your fleet did surprisingly well, Mister Cormelle.'

Not completely true: a few dozen people had either died in suspension or upon being revived. There had been a statistical risk, nought point nought nought nought five per cent, which the colonists accepted as a consequence of their interstellar travel. The UN back on Earth had worried that they might lose whole ships en route, which had been a concern. That still left almost eighty thousand colonists, who were now marshalling themselves. For the great majority, all those who had been in suspension, their first hours were going to be spent in calisthenics and exercise, building themselves up to get used to gravity again. Acclimatising to the heat would take weeks, if not months. Meanwhile –

'Let's not stand around, there's work to be done. Hon, can you see to drilling? We need water as soon as possible for us and the livestock. Evan, co-ordinate with the hauliers, because I want to guarantee that plant goes where it's needed. Miles, you and Dean can supervise the revived.'

Evan went back inside the ship to disassemble the communication suite. Roger's wife, Cally, checked which haulier had the mobile drilling rigs and headed over that way, escorted by Roger.

'Don't you trust me to do the job?' she teased.

'Why certainly! I just want to get the senior staff together.'

'You could just use your belt-mike.'

'I could, but I want to see everyone face-to-face. It's important to emphasise that our lifestyle and our mission are only beginning.'

By this time they had made it to the lee of Number 4, which cast a shadow in the light of twin suns overhead. Remembering that this was an alien world was easier when you witnessed strange double shadows on the ground.

And the ground! Roger parted company with Cally and stooped to dig fingers into the turf. Dark black humus, good agricultural growing land. They had chosen well, given the lack of detailed information from the computerised satellite scout.

'Roger! Out and organising already?' came a female voice from behind, as a hand slapped him on the shoulder. He stood and found Mary Wong, one of the American colonists. Captain of the Number Four. No – _ex_-Captain, he corrected himself.

'You bet,' he replied. 'I want to address the senior staff altogether in the passenger hall on Number One.'

Mary pointedly looked at his belt mike.

'You wanted to get out and walk the land, didn't you?'

He laughed at her perceptiveness.

'Guilty! Yes. Yes I did. We chose well for a settlement.'

Mary looked over the landing zone, now dotted with landed spaceships. The landing zone itself had to be capable of taking the physical weight of landed Conversion Class starship; it had to be fertile; it needed to be in the temperate zone; it had to be level or with minimal undulations; it needed to have water-bearing geology; it had to allow for expansion in the future; it had to be safe. That last one was a guess.

'Okay, I'm off to the passenger hall.'

It took Roger an hour and a half to get round the landed ships and instruct their seniors to head over for his vessel, but he wanted to do this in person, quite besides looking over their site. He was the most senior senior, who hadn't seen any of these people in the flesh for the nine months they'd spent in space. Nor would it hurt to remind them who was in charge here, after all.

Tents were being pitched when he walked back to his ship; shower stalls were being erected, and latrines, too. Life would be fairly basic until more, larger structural components were removed from the Han-Sho's.

'You're doing well, quick work. Keep it up!' he encouraged a group of people digging and pitching and hammering. They were revivees, getting used to physical activity. He was impressed at how rapidly they had gotten back to normal.

A giant beetle-like machine moving slowly between the landed hulls paused to let him pass by.

'What model are you?' he asked, forgetting which it was.

'AUTONOMIC LAMINATE LAYER MISTER CORMELLE,' the robot replied. 'SURVEYING FOR SUITABLY FLAT AREA OF SUFFICIENT SIZE FOR HELIPAD.'

'Carry on,' he joked.

Ah, yes, their helochopters. They had only two – at ten million nemmies each the colonists simply couldn't afford any more, even if their logistics planners had wanted at least a dozen. A dozen! They would be needed for fetching and carrying, and surveying. The satellite scan only came to seventy-six per cent of the planet's surface. You couldn't settle on a world and remain in ignorance of almost a quarter of the biosphere, not if you wanted to survive. Besides that, the UN refused to permit any non-governmental expeditions to any planet not surveyed to at least sixty per cent coverage.

Outside Number One – no, he would need to give it a name now. Headquarters. Very well, outside HQ, Evan had set up his communication suite on a piece of flat panelling to give it stability. Next to it lay a large piece of inner-wall lining plastic, sheeting to be used to cover the equipment from the elements.

Even looked up from the display panels, tapped his throat mike to turn it off and gave a thumbs-up to Mister Cormelle, as he always thought of the Canadian. The big, grey haired leader pointed at the plastic sheeting.

'To keep the rain off?'

'Yes, Mister Cormelle, though to look at the skies we're not going to get any. The hauliers report everything going smoothly so far. They're going to be off-loading the motor transport next.'

'By the way, since we're now strictly confined to the ground, I've decided to christen this ship – or ex-ship – "Headquarters". Pass the word around.'

'Yes, sir,' replied Evan as the other man walked up the landing ramp, making him pause.

'No, Evan. I'm not a captain any more. Plain old "Mister", thank you.'

Whoops! thought Evan. The mission leader had a casual air of command that confirmed his status as a captain of industry, a billionaire, the man whose drive, money and initiative had gotten them here. He asked pleasantly and politely, but he expected his wishes to be done, no messing.

'Got it – Mister Cormelle. Oh, every one of the seniors have arrived.'

Roger nodded and walked back into Headquarters. Revived passengers gave him smiles or nods of acknowledgement on his way to the passenger hall as they went about pre-arranged and scheduled removal and off-loading work.

What would he tell them? The unalloyed truth, he supposed. Tie in their background on Earth and what they'd left behind.

The passenger hall, empty of passengers, still looked crowded with all the assembled senior crew. All shapes, colours and sizes: humanity's latest thrust into outer space.

Cally had gotten one of the suspension "coffins", disconnected it and turned it onto one side, creating an impromptu platform. Roger climbed up and started straight away.

'Okay, things seem to be running according to schedule. I'm pleased with that. Let us make no mistake, however: this is the easy part of our mission, a matter of logistics. We will face unforseen challenges in the future, which we have to overcome. Let me emphasise that: _have_ to! Earth is over two hundred light years away and the UN won't send help for anything less than imminent destruction of the Fall. That's not about to happen. So we are on our own. At present we cannot pretend to be a democracy, either, despite our longer-term plans.'

Having been blunt and insistent, he mellowed a little.

'However! You can walk outside without needing a filter. You can drink the water once it's boiled. You can see the sun. Sorry, suns! No terrorism. No emergency inocculation programmes. No medical emergencies. No pollution alerts. Any time you or your passengers get antsy, remember what we left behind.'


	2. Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER TWO

Ace was surprised that the Doctor didn't zip over to the colonist's landing site straight away, for nothing more sophisticated than a nosey around.

In fact the Doctor spent the rest of that morning in his braces, taking parts of the central time rotor apart, fiddling with the unidentifiable bits he removed, putting them back and running tests. Given the sheer complexity of the TARDIS, the lack of a fully-trained crew to operate it and the timeship's elderly nature, not to mention the mileage the Time Lord had done in her, faults and breakdowns were inevitable. Being in the middle of nowhere, with no other distractions, meant no excuses about not having time to do servicing.

Beguilingly, the repairs went so successfully that the Doctor, feeling reckless, decided to tackle the consistently erratic Chameleon Circuit. Although described as a "circuit", it was in reality an interacting suite of different components, scattered around the fabric of the control room. Thus, when Ace was driven to return to the TARDIS by hunger pangs at noon, she walked into a scene of what she felt was, understating wildly, disrepair. Panels were missing from the walls, bits of the time rotor had been taken apart, twinkling tangles of cable ran everywhere, periodically teased apart and labelled. The Doctor himself was wielding a spanner and screwdriver and taking yet another panel off the wall, revealing the liquid circuitry that operated there.

'Blimey, Professor, are you taking it all to bits!' she exclaimed.

Ruefully, her companion looked at her over his glasses and sighed.

'It was all going so well, Ace. So I decided to try and repair the Chameleon Circuit. Then I found I needed to fix a series of chimper nodes before I could start on the Chameleon Circuit, and I had to take part of the power source off-line to get to the chimper nodes – it rather snowballed.'

'Dunno why you want to change the TARDIS,' grumbled Ace. 'I think it's brill as it is. What's for lunch?'

'Lunch, young lady, will be indefinitely delayed.' He tutted at the young woman's expression of dismay. 'You know where the kitchen is, go and help yourself.'

She returned five minutes later with a plate of sandwiches, offering one to the Doctor.

'I thought you'd have gone off to greet those colonists,' she mumbled past a mouth full of bread and cheese. 'Shake hands, say hello.'

The Doctor poked into the innards before him with the screwdriver, resulting in a shower of sparks.

'Oops! Not that one, then. I think the colonists will be too busy colonising to welcome a welcoming committee. They might not welcome people who arrived before they did, either.'

Ace shrugged. The Doctor didn't bother adding details – at this point in history, the UN would allow private persons or entities to legally "buy" a world in order to colonise it. The process was long, procedural and complicated, and being present on such a world before the rightful owners arrived meant being viewed with all the hostility accorded to squatters.

Once her lunch was over, Ace headed outside again. Clearly the Doctor was preoccupied with resolving the mess he'd gotten the timeship into, and would make poor conversational company. This time she took along her stereo for company, and songs from The Psychedelic Furs blasted forth over the alien landscape.

" '_Isn't she – isn't she pretty in pink_" ,' chorused Ace, bitingly aware of the irony involved in such a phrase, given her lack of girliness. She didn't own anything pink, or frilly, or –

BANG! went the air overhead, making her duck down out of sheer physical reaction.

'Owww – wicked.' A bit strained, given her reaction, but close to the truth. She looked to the skies, not seeing anything. 'Supersonic.'

Whatever had traversed the heavens was long gone. One of the colonists, she supposed. When the phenomenon didn't return she plucked up enough courage to carry on playing her tape, keeping half an eye on the skies.

"Com test, com test, ranging in seconds five," said the stereo, making Ace stop and look at it in surprise. Sure enough, five seconds later a static squawk came out of the speakers.

The colonists! She realised. They must be testing their radio equipment. She frowned in annoyance – their radio had better not interrupt her music.

Taking one of the Doctor's quelmeuce from a jacket pocket, Ace nibbled on them. They had a nutty, tangy flavour and were fleshy on the inside. Not quite as delicious as the Doctor implied; still, they were okay.

Another squawk surprised her. This time the source was off to one side of the wide jungle trail, a fire-red lizard with an erect crest of yellow spines. It squawked at her again, shot out a pale pink tongue and scurried away, alarmed by the upright intruder.

'I'm quite friendly when you get to know me!' Ace called after it. 'Snob!' she added when it failed to re-appear.

Not long after, she came across a collection of what she termed "hoppers", small oval-bodied creatures with ridiculously long legs that hopped like clockwork toys. The Doctor had a long, latin-sounding name for them, but to Ace they remained Hoppers. Unlike the lizards and birds, they didn't flee from human contact, explained by the Time Lord as "encephalographic resonance", which Ace nodded at and promptly forgot. One of them was bold enough to nibble at a quelmeuce Ace offered. It flinched away when that familiar sound of thunder came echoing up over the horizon from further south.

Ace stood and looked at the ground. Currently, she was under a thinner jungle canopy where there were large gaps, enabling the twin suns to shine unhindered. Consequently the ground was fairly dry.

Shouldn't it be soggy, with all these thunderstorms? Not that she was Michael Fish or knew much about weather.

Shrugging, she followed the trail, which wound over to the lip of a river valley. Tranquility made concrete: Ace sat with her back to a tree and dozed off without meaning to.

When she woke, hours later, her back was stiff and her behind was cold. Stretching away her aches, she realised how late it was and began to hurry back to the TARDIS. The route back was fairly obvious, if rather long, so she didn't worry about getting lost.

A sudden thought struck her, with unpleasant implications. Say the Doctor _had_ managed to fix the Chameleon Circuit? Would the TARDIS now resemble a tree or a rock? Would she recognise it?

Her fears were groundless: the familiar shape of the blue police box sat in the clearing where she'd left it.

The Doctor was sitting on a stool, sipping elegantly from a cup of tea and nibbling at a Rich Tea biscuit when she arrived back inside the craft.

None of the chaotic mess from early morning remained, though the Timelord's shirt had stains and scars on it. He looked ridiculously pleased with himself, thought Ace.

'You fixed it, didn't you?' she half-stated, half-accused.

'Yes, as of five minutes ago. I did think of testing it, but you wouldn't have recognised the old girl if I had, would you?' He patted the time rotor.

Ace narrowed her eyes. At times the Doctor behaved as if the TARDIS were simply a machine – fantastically advanced, of course, but no more than a machine. And at other times, like now, he implied that the spaceship was alive.

'I picked up the colonists broadcasting on my stereo as well,' she stated.

'Oh?' said the Doctor, paying more attention to his tea than Ace's comments. Then what she said sank in and he looked at her. 'I rather doubt that.'

'Richard Butler doesn't sing about "com test, com test",' retorted Ace.

'I'm not saying that you didn't hear it, Ace, just that it's unlikely for the colonists to have broadcast the message.'

'Why, Professor?'

He put the tea down to count points off on his fingers.

'One: they probably came down in a very localised area – they don't need to broadcast to any far-flung settlement.

'Two: line of sight. For you to pick up their broadcast it would have to be extremely powerful or relayed via satellite. Again, they have no reason to act in such a way.

'Three: Atmosphere. Given that this planet orbits twin suns, both different from old Sol, I doubt that radio transmissions will work in the way you're familiar with, Ace.'

'I still heard it,' sulked the young woman.

The Doctor picked up his umbrella, rested it upright on the floor, placed both hands over the handle and rested his chin atop his hands.

'Yessss. So I wonder who sent it?'

'And I heard more thunder. AND a sonic boom!' added Ace, egging the pudding. The Doctor directed his sharp eyes at her.

'Did you see where the creator of this sonic assault was headed?' he asked, rolling the _r_ in "where".

'South, I suppose. Like the one that arrived with the colonists.'

Briefly, she described the needle-nosed aircraft, much to the Doctor's dislike.

'Doesn't sound like colonists, does it?' he remarked. 'Their ships were all gallumphing great skyscrapers.'

'Would it have anything to do with that thunder we keep hearing, without any thunderstorms?'

With a speed and suddenness that took Ace by surprise, the Doctor jumped to his feet.

'Let's check!' he declared, striding to the TADIS doors and throwing them open. He wet a finger and checked for wind strength and direction.

'Hmmm. Let me see – that would mean any weather system further south would get here in a matter of hours.'

He ducked back inside, pressing dials and buttons and eventually coming up with a display on the main scanner that showed a view from orbit. Ace didn't know how he managed that, since there weren't any satellites in orbit to create such a view –

'Ha!' snorted the Time Lord. 'Look at that!'

He didn't explain, so Ace peered closely at the greenery on show.

'Oh!' she realised. 'No storm clouds.'

Strolling up close to the monitor, the Doctor pointed out a grey scar amidst the rolling jungles, tapping it with the point of his umbrella.

'That's not natural. Some agency has removed the entire biosphere from a significant stretch of what looks like a river valley. I think a closer look is called for.'

'Here we go again!' chirped Ace.

The trip was short, and accurate. When the scanner was turned on, it showed a thin veil of vegetation, beyond which the landscape had become entirely denuded of forest. A dull, continual rumble came from the very ground beneath their feet.

'This is not good. Not good at all!' muttered the Time Lord, putting his hat on and seizing his umbrella. 'Come and take a look.'

Outside the TARDIS, the air throbbed with a pulsing mechanical rhythm, the stink of hot metal stung their nostrils, and yells and shouts came from the cleared landscape. Ace followed the Doctor, who crouched at the treeline and gazed on the – mine? She saw massive, hulking spaceships with a red logo, giant earth-moving equipment, fences, barbed wire, and what seemed like a military camp.

'IMC!' hissed the Doctor, recognising the stark red lettering. He took out his telescope and gazed down at the site, measuring the activity. The whole valley, at least two square miles, had been cleared of vegetation, leaving a denuded, barren terrain. At the moment the big plant machinery was sitting idle. That wouldn't last long: time and money management were big on IMC's agenda.

'Wow, nice kit,' enthused Ace, admiring the sleek, feral lines of half a dozen spaceships parked in a wired hardstand. The Doctor turned his attention upon them, and tutted in puzzled annoyance.

'Who are IMC, anyway, Doctor?'

Without removing his eye from the telescope, the Doctor began counting quietly.

'Professor?'

' "Interstellar Mining Corporation", Ace. I've had a couple of encounters with them in the past.'

A surprisingly bitter tone lay behind the words.

'So, what's the problem?' asked Ace. It was a big planet; there was enough room for this lot and the colonists, surely?

'They're not called "The Planet Rapers" for nothing,' replied the Doctor. 'IMC is inspired by greed. Not profit; greed.'

'Sort of like a multi-national?' ventured the young woman.

The Doctor offered her a wry grin.

'IMC make the worst multi-nationals of your era look like models of socialist good practice.'

'Scumbags!' Ace cheerfully retorted.

Her mentor turned his attention back to the giant campsite.

'Yes. They have their own security force, too. A pocket army. Which is why I find it surprising that they have what appears to be a mercenary force encamped alongside them.'

Ace took a turn with the telescope. The military encampment featured trenches, armed four-wheeled vehicles, a strange type of helicopter and men in uniform, wearing black berets. Other armed men, wearing red and silver uniforms, must be the private army the Doctor referred to.

'Skullduggery afoot!' mused the Time Lord, pursing his lips and wondering.

'Maybe, but there's no skulldiggery!' punned Ace. The Doctor winced. 'They aren't mining anything.'

'Not yet,' corrected the Doctor. 'That I find just as perturbing. What are they waiting for?'

He suspected that IMC were merely setting the stage, getting their camp established, preparing thoroughly before beginning the excavation work that would gut the planet. The longer the initial pause, the greater the eventual assault on the environment. Pretty obviously, those sounds of thunder had been the cataclysmic excavation of this site. Large-scale meson drilling, probably.

Slowly, voices began to approach their protective screen of trees.

'The sonic scanners picked up a non-ambient sound!' insisted a male voice. 'Right along this bearing.'

'Time to go,' whispered the Doctor, shooing Ace back to the TARDIS. When a suspicious patrol of mercenary soldiers arrived they were puzzled by tracks that led to and from a square depression in the soil, and the absence of anyone or anything.

Roger Cormelle was pleased with progress so far, and so were the colonist's leaders, those ex-pilots and ex-captains of the outbound voyage. They had the tents established, basic sanitation, and a couple of boreholes were now producing water. They had retained their shipboard allocations of staff and ex-captains, now leaders on the ground.

Their big heavy-metal project now underway was the conversion of Number Sixteen from an interstellar starship and into a power plant. It had been deliberately landed vertically and was the tallest structure in sight across the whole settlement. The logistics staff who insisted on this were willing to risk ground subsidence in view of what they planned to do to the vessel: take it apart from the top downwards.

For that to happen, they needed to remove the nose-cone. Once that had been done, one of the helochopters would remove the cargo that Number Sixteen carried in lieu of passengers: three Maxwell anti-matter generators in the gigawatt range, each as big as a house and weighing in at ninety tonnes. Of course, before then they had to actually un-crate the big flying machine, reassemble it and try a few test flights.

Beauclaire, one of his old staff from CIC, came over to report that the first helo had been successfully tested. Should they begin the dismantling?

'Not now, I notice that one of the suns is down and the other's going down.'

Beauclaire made a small sound of surprise.

'You're right, Roger. I've been too busy to notice!

He got an elbow in the ribs for that.

'Don't try to suck up to me!' laughed Roger. 'Get the helo covered. We'll begin the plant removal tomorrow morning. At present we can cope without power from the Maxwell's.'

Power cables ran from the grounded spaceships, a temporary measure that allowed the dozen tent "cities" to sustain lighting and cooking facilities.

The colonists were cooking in shifts, using catering supplies from storage, the branded foodstuffs supplied by Coggins Catering. Things would be a bit hand-to-mouth at first, before their livestock was capable of breeding and the planted crops grew. His wife called on the belt-mike and he wandered over to his quarters, a spartan bunk under canvas in the "Lyonesse" encampment.

'Evening meal's ready,' she informed him, and they both took their place at the long trestle table spanning the width of the tent. Roger got exactly the same as everyone else; they might not be democratic for the present, but he'd not gotten any special privileges.

He took his time eating, enjoying the sights and sounds of people conversing on all sides. So different from being cooped-up in a spaceship hull for months on end!

'I see one of the helo's is ready for use,' said Dean, sipping at a cup of water. 'Oh, say what! That's nice water, for water. The shipboard stuff is flat by comparison.'

'Correct. We'll get the Maxwell generators onto the ground tomorrow.'

'I wonder – I wonder, how long will it be until we need bigger power plant?' asked Dean.

Cally, sitting alongside her husband, indicated the Han-Sho to one side.

'We've got seventy-seven extra if we need them.'

True enough, even if the space-craft's power plants were all over the place thanks to the landing pattern, not to mention more suitable as a stop-gap instead of a custom-designed plant.

'At a rough guess, I'd say forty years,' stated Roger, with conviction. 'We don't have any limiting factors to restrict growth, which will be exponential. So – forty years as an informed guess.'

There was no doubt in the minds of anyone listening that Roger Cormelle was going to make this settlement successful.

'It's a shame we couldn't have bigger generators. Extend that forty years to fifty, maybe,' said a voice Roger didn't recognise.

'Can't do it. We're restricted to what will physically fit into the cargo holds,' explained Cally.

After dining, they helped to clear up the plates and crockery. By the time the eating utensils were cleaned again, the next shift's food would be ready.

'Kreurke, can I see you?' asked Roger of his belt-mike. The message automatically directed itself to Rolf Kreurke's belt-mike and he responded, meeting Roger on the walkway outside Lyonesse. The Belgian's severe crew-cut and upright posture betrayed his ex-army background – as did the rifle slung over his shoulder.

'Making an early start with that, aren't you?' asked Roger, slightly astonished at the weapon's appearance. As a safety precaution they had brought along one weapon per hundred and fifty people, mostly obsolete military models – which came cheap and lightweight.

Kreurke grinned a lop-sided grin.

'Oh, I don't think it'll be needed. Any hostile wildlife will have scattered to the corners of the earth after our dramatic landing. Just in case.'

Roger rubbed his chin.

'You'll need to carry it tomorrow.'

He explained further: since it would take weeks to get acceptable levels of yield from their crops, presuming the planting went successfully, and even longer for the edible livestock, again presuming nothing went wrong with their animal husbandry, the colonists would be living out of tins. So, from tomorrow, Kreurke was to take a small group into the jungles to identify any edible native plants, or animals. Using a portable toximeter, they could easily determine what was poisonous or not. After that, a food sweep into the jungle could take place, harvesting anything edible.

Kreurke looked outwards into the darkened jungle, where the shadows of full night were starting to lengthen. Such a lack of illumination was unheard of in Liege, his hometown. Out here, the very air smelt different. He sucked in a lungful of it.

'Ahh. Now, breathing without a filter or air-mask – that's progress,' he commented. 'Okay, I'll take half a dozen out tomorrow.'

Having done that, Roger headed back to HQ. Evan was outside, ferreting around the insides of his communications equipment, which was now protected by overhead panels supported on a plastic frame.

'You're not having problems already, are you?'

Evan frowned at his boss.

'As a matter of fact, we are. I'd expect reception and transmission to improve at night, not get worse. Probably local conditions. Give me a day of mucking about and I'll have it sorted.'

The level of technology on display took a quantum leap when Roger moved back inside the hull of HQ. More of the interior structure was becoming visible as panels and sheets were removed, part of the deconstruction and recycling process that would continue in shifts until Stage One – the creation of a viable settlement – had been achieved.

Captain Husak, leader of the Green Line haulier pilots and crews, was waiting for him in the empty passenger hall. Behind him, banks of displays showed various atmospheric data, confirming that there was no bad weather in the offing. The clutch of technical staff who had unseated, re-aligned and re-activated their salvaged gear sat watching, making notes on their new home's behaviour.

'Hello,' began Husak, in his thick mittel-european accent.

'Good news only, I hope?' replied Roger. The captain returned the look politely, not quite understanding the levity.

'Our unloading process is up to forty-five percent. This is slower than we would have liked – here another day at least for the unloading and disembarkation.'

Roger frowned.

'What's the hold-up?'

The Captain shrugged.

'There is not enough room to space out all the equipment properly. We have been forced to expand the parking perimeter into the jungle edges, which takes time.'

Ah! Realised Roger. The sounds of toppling trees he had mistaken for the colonists getting to grips with construction material and firewood. That heavy plant needed to be arranged and protected from the elements until it was needed, since some of the specialised equipment would be off-line for up to eight months, if the plans were accurate. Once set out properly the colonists would erect shedding from recycled spaceship components.

'You should have told me, Captain. I can provide several hundred people to make parking space easily enough.'

With a continental moue, the Captain nodded.

'That would be welcome.'

Feeling magnanimous, Roger gave him a slap on the shoulder.

'Don't worry, I know you need to be away. Next contract due on Earth, time and motion and efficiency?'

The Captain saluted and strode off, having to dodge shift-workers who were taking the vessel apart.

Dean and Fermelle were next into the inner sanctum. Dean was Roger's Hargreave's Fall version of his terrestrial role within CIC – a roving troubleshooter. Both looked as if they had less-than-wonderful news.

'Go on!' said Roger, taking a seat on an upturned suspension coffin. 'You go first. I can tell you're dying to get the bad news out.'

Fermelle was a plump female doctor, lots of experience but new to Roger; not unusual given the size of the mission.

'I shan't beat about the bush. One of the female colonists is pregnant. I wanted to tell you in person instead of broadcasting it to everyone at large.'

Roger rolled his eyes heavenwards.

Great! One of the provisos of being a colony member was _avoiding_ pregnancy. It seemed counter-intuitive, but the UN pointed out with the wisdom of experience that newly-born children amongst a newly-landed settlement were a liability. Once they were up and running, fine –

'An accident, she says. Conception occurred directly before suspension. Their contraceptive shots appear to have been faulty.'

'Mhm. She's lucky she didn't lose the embryo. Better start a random selection test of other female colonists – a faulty batch of contraceptives will play havoc with our plans if it's widespread. Be discreet.'

He stared at her for a long second before she realised that was it, interview over, and departed.

'You were restrained, boss. Don't you want to know who it is?'

Roger tutted.

'If she's lucky and doesn't lose the baby – seriously, an embryo in suspension rarely survives – if the baby survives, we'll find out. Don't you worry! Now – your problem?'

Dean sighed.

'Our second helo. The crated CPU installation for it's flight controller is the wrong kind. For a Bell, not a Kamov.'

'Damn! So we've effectively lost a helo already!'

Dean cocked his head to one side, calculatingly.

'No! No, the electronic guys say it'll be easy enough to create a substitute from Han-Sho components, just time-consuming. Say a couple of days.'

'Ah, you redeemed yourself there. Okay, first thing when it gets light is to assemble a labouring group to enlarge the heavy vehicle park. Take as many loose bodies as you need.'

Dean bobbed his head and was off, his lanky frame moving swiftly off amidst the organised chaos.

Roger rubbed his chin, thinking cautious thoughts. These problems were nothing decisive individually. What he worried about was a knock-on effect, a synergy of trouble making other troubles worse.

With a wave of the hand he banished them. They were going to triumph here, no question!


	3. Chapter 3

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER THREE

'This is more like it!' crowed Ace at the Doctor, who grumbled at her in annoyance at her light-hearted attitude.

'It is not!' he growled. 'A nice peaceful rest disturbed by the worst kind of exploiters in existence.'

'I mean riding to the rescue,' added Ace. 'A bit of peace and quiet is all very well, but I'm not a nun.'

Her companion drummed his fingers upon his lips, a sure sign of mental calculation.

As he saw it, there was a brief window of opportunity where the colonists would be able to fend off IMC, if they got organised quickly enough. That would be tricky enough, what with trying to establish themselves on the Fall –

'I said, Professor, what makes IMC so terrible? There wasn't a lot of stuff at that big campsite. It would take decades to make a mess!'

Typically, the Doctor answered her question with another question.

'Have you heard of Von Neumann machines?'

She had, but couldn't remember quite where. A science-fiction story, she guessed, read before her life became just such a story.

Von Neumann machines, pontificated the Doctor, were machines that self-replicated to create more of their kind. The original intention had been to create a continually expanding wavefront of exploratory machines that could explore the galaxy at sub-light speed, using the resources of worlds they encountered along the way.

IMC used a lower level of sophistication in adopting that same self-replicating technology. Those big cargo-ships carried mobile factories. "Factories" being a simplification; they combined mining, refining and construction facilities. Those factories would be sent out across the planet for Phase One: creating more factories, which would in turn create more factories, and so on. When a critical saturation point had been reached, Phase Two would begin: the production of robotic mining equipment. Then came Phase Three; the total exploitation of all physical resources across the entire globe.

'They could destroy this planet totally in a few years, turn it into a stinking despoiled wasteland. Three, four years at the most, Ace, and this unsullied wilderness will be like the landscape of the Somme.'

Ah, realised Ace. That was bad. The Somme had been that place in France. A whole planet like that?

'Scumbags!' she commented, quietly and sincerely.

Since haste was of the essence, the Doctor contrarily took time to place his landing co-ordinates carefully. He didn't have time to obtain an overhead longitude and latitude placement for the landing site, so he homed in on the energy emissions coming in on infra-red wavelengths on the assumption that there was little else they could be but colonist activity. Hopefully he wouldn't land in the middle of a forest fire! He refined the final site by adjusting his approach after listening to high-frequency broadcasts that must be the orientation and exchange signals for mobile robots.

The time rotor echoed to a halt and the Doctor clasped his hands together behind his back, rocking up and down on his heels whilst looking at the external scanner. A giant level expanse in the midst of the ever-present tropical jungle now lay covered with the black bulk of dozens of landed starships. Small townships of tent cities had been erected already and multifarious black robots of arcane designs were moving around the site, stopping to sample the soil or the air.

'Wow!' exclaimed Ace, seeing that several of the starships were now sporting great gaps in their superstructure and fuselage. 'Did they crash?'

'No,' replied the Time Lord, still bobbing up and down on his heels, pondering how to proceed next. 'Han-Sho design. Recyclable.'

Coming to a decision, he strode to the TARDIS doors and threw them open dramatically, Ace scurrying to keep up.

Once outside, Ace took two steps forward, felt a strange absence, turned around and nearly fell over in shock.

The TARDIS had vanished! Stricken into immobility for a second, she darted after the Doctor, who had continued moving.

'Professor!' she gasped, her breathing all out of kilter thanks to the weight of her rucksack.

'Yes?' he replied, strolling on at speed with both hands still clasped behind his back, and umbrella dangling from one elbow.

'The TARDIS has gone!' she managed, trying not to get a stitch.

The Doctor paused for a moment, turning back and grinning broadly.

'Excellent!' he beamed, unclasping his hands and offering Ace an elbow.

'What – oh – you expected that. The Chameleon Circuit?' she belatedly understood, craning her head around to look backwards. Impassively, the edge of the jungle remained seeming to be only jungle, even if it did harbour a time-travelling spaceship. The TARDIS a tree? Which one? It could be any of a dozen from this range and none looked any less tree-ish than the other.

'Can't tell, eh?' jested the Doctor. 'Good. If you can't then neither can the colonists!'

Hubris, he reminded himself. It had been so long since the Chameleon circuitry actually worked that he hadn't been sure the TARDIS would operate it effectively, if at all. The old girl did have a propensity to stick with morphological patterns that she was comfortable with, and she had been comfortable with that old police box appearance for lo, these many centuries.

They were less than a hundred paces from the edge of the jungle and still at least a kilometre from the nearest hull when an accusatory call went up from behind them.

Trotting along in a compact group not far behind them was a group of what looked like paramilitary police – black boilersuits, webbing, body-warmers and slung weapons. Only the bulging sacks they carried looked out of place. As they drew closer to the now-halted pair, Ace could make out the leader, a wiry individual with cropped grey hair and the air of a soldier. The others were all shapes and sizes, with uniform expressions of surprise and wariness.

'Who the hell are you!' barked the Soldier, as Ace immediately dubbed him.

'I'm the Doctor, and this is Dorothy – better known as "Ace",' politely explained the Time Lord. He gave an apologetic half-smile. 'Take me to your leader!'

For a second the grey-haired man seemed taken aback, not knowing what to say in response to this cliched request. Then, regaining his composure, he put his hands on his hips and looked closer at the two, who were blatantly not colonists.

'Mister Cormelle? You certainly are going to be taken to him!'

Exhibiting all the easy grace of long practice, he unslung his rifle and pointed it at the Doctor.

'Oi! Steady on!' snapped Ace, not pleased at her mentor being threatened. The Doctor shushed her with a finger over her lips.

'Go on, get moving,' said the Soldier.

'Certainly!' replied the Doctor, with considerable bonhomie. 'Where?' he added a second later.

'Headquarters.'

'Excellent! Where's that?'

Glowering, the man stalked around his captives and snapped at them to follow him.

Ace looked in bewilderment at the starships scattered across miles of open ground. No signs of explosions or crash-damage, yet nearly all of them were falling apart to a greater or lesser extent, and one vessel had landed on it's tail and suffered the loss of the entire nose section. How did that work? she wondered. Nor did there seem to be the hordes of casualties such disastrous landings would have caused. People bustled about in abundance, all busy at allotted tasks with an indefinable air of moral superiority made all the more evident by the looks of wonderment directed at her and the Doctor. Then she recalled what the reply to her query in the TARDIS had been – "recyclable".

'Professor, do they - '

'Be quiet, you,' ordered a voice from behind.

The pair were led alongside a spaceship hull, a plastic matting walkway underfoot that led past a shack full of exotic electronic equipment, which was being disembowelled by a young man swearing under his breath, non-stop. He scowled at Ace, who stuck her tongue out at him in a fit of childish whimsy.

'Up the ramp,' ordered the Soldier, standing to one side and gesturing with his rifle. Once inside there was only one way to walk, into the bowels of a spaceship that had been partially-stripped and was still being taken apart. Colonists in grey or blue boilersuits stopped to stare at the new arrivals before carrying on with their salvage.

What had once been an airlock, now doorless, led into a dully-echoing chamber where redundant nozzles and tubing marched in knee-high ranks across the floorspace. Squarely in the middle stood an arrangement of (chest-freezers? wondered Ace; SusAn units turned upside down, recognised the Doctor) big oblong boxes. Gathered around this was a meeting of colonists in boilersuits of different colours, all discussing a hologram projected atop the makeshift plinth. With rapidity, this meeting stopped talking and turned to stare at the incongruous pair being led towards them.

'What on – no – what have you brought us, Kreurke?' asked an imposing man, tall, distinguished-looking and with an air of implied authority.

'Found them coming out of the jungle, Mister Cormelle. This one - ' a wave of the gun at the Doctor ' – claims to be a doctor.' He cast an eye over Ace. 'This one – not sure what she claims to be.'

'What are you? National Front poster-boy?' retorted Ace before she could stop herself.

The Doctor sighed. Fortunately the barb was completely lost on it's target, being five hundred years out of date.

'I am not _a_ Doctor. I am _the_ Doctor. And I have come to help,' intoned the Doctor, politeness personified, bowing, doffing his hat and flipping it back on his head neatly.

The colonists either laughed scornfully or snorted in bewilderment.

'All two of you! Thank you so much!' chortled one of those clustered around the hologram.

'We have our own medical staff, thank you,' said the tall leader, smiling wryly.

'Oh, I'm not offering medical help – Mister Cormelle, is it? No, I have a little advice to give you.'

Once again, the reaction was either amusement or puzzlement.

'We've come from the south, down near the mid-tropic levels - ' began the Time Lord.

'Where?' asked a voice.

'What! How long were you down there!' asked one of the armed escort party.

'So you weren't just nearby?' asked Kreurke.

'Please! Really, you must listen to me - '

'We've just seen IMC!' shouted Ace.

The reaction was just what the Doctor had hoped to provoke; get everyone focussed on him in an escalating spiral argument, then abruptly break their cycle of concentration with a causal statement from Ace, who could be relied upon to interfere when her temper got the better of her.

Suddenly there was complete silence, a silence that lasted for the better part of three seconds as their audience realised what the young woman had said.

'Did you say IMC?' asked Cormelle, quietly. Ace nodded furiously.

'The Interstellar Mining Corporation. Quite. You know their reputation, of course,' stated the Doctor. 'They've been here for perhaps three or four days.'

A babble of incomprehensible chatter broke out amongst the colonists, with the exception of Cormelle, who fixed the Doctor with a look of considerable wrath.

The little Time Lord beamed sincerity and beneficence from every pore. He now knew he had to wait for the colonists to establish an emotional equilibrium, which might take a few minutes. Then he could step in to take control of things.

After ten minutes of forceful arguing, he felt less confident about the length of time it would take for the colonist's leaders to reach a conclusion, or at least a longish pause.

'Have you bumped into IMC before?' asked Ace. 'I get the impression you and they are old friends, kind of.'

The Doctor grinned a small, mischievous smile. There was the steely glint of more than mischief in there, too.

'Oh yes! Oh yes indeed. It must have been, let me see, about thirty years ago for the first time and a few regenerations ago, too. AD 2472.'

He explained how another band of colonists, a far smaller party than this group, had been struggling and failing to sustain themselves on the bleak colony world Uxarieus, and whose very existence was threatened by the arrival of IMC. The mining operation knew it's presence was illegal, but had gambled that it would take so long for the original occupiers to send out an SOS and obtain redress that mining would have returned a healthy profit.

Enter the Doctor. He had helped the colonists to organise and fight back, overcoming even the interference of the Master, who had turned up like a bad penny.

That had been a happy ending. The second time he met IMC a decade afterwards had been far too late to avert an ecological disaster that destroyed the native populations of Gedovitz' World, proto-hominids killed to the number of a hundred million. Earth hadn't bothered, much – proto-hominids were only slightly-evolved monkeys, was the reason used, and they'd benefited from the taxes levied on IMC's profits.

Roger had the two strangers marched off to a corner whilst the small command group discussed this news. He didn't want them eavesdropping on the worries unearthed.

'Kreurke. Where did they come from?'

'Nowhere far off. Look at them, nice and neat. From nearby, I'd say. Not from half a planet away!'

'What did they mention IMC for! That can't possibly be true!' said Cally.

Beauclaire was less certain.

'There's a twenty-four per cent gap in the data across this whole planet, Mrs. Cormelle. Plenty of room for a landing party, or three or four. They could conceivably be here and we won't know until we get the whole planet assayed.'

Roger smacked a fist against the unturned suspension unit.

'One helo isn't ready and won't be for – Dean? How long?'

'Two days, Boss. And we'd need to supercharge the power cells on the other one for a trip that long. An eight hour charge session to be on the safe side, plus – I'm guessing – about twenty hours flight time there and back.'

Evan had cautiously followed the party into HQ and now hung around at the back, not sure if he should really be here or not. Roger spotted him and hied him over.

'No luck with the comm system?'

Embarrassed at being unable to solve the problem, Even merely grunted in agreement.

'I'd like a bit more detail than _that_,' said Roger, evenly but with meaning.

'Sorry, sir –er, Mister Cormelle. I cannot find anything wrong with the system! Give me another four hours and if I can't fix it I'll build a completely new one.'

Next was the reason for IMC being present.

'Unclaimed wilderness. Total exploitation would be easy, if we weren't here.'

'Perhaps IMC aren't really here yet,' wondered Dean. 'This pair have been sent to scare us off.'

'Dean!' scolded Cally. 'First of all, we can't go back. Secondly, wait a minute - '

She pulled a small crystal ingot from around her neck. Roger had the second of the pair. It was a duplicate of the original chaotic sapphire strand ("_Genuine Swiss Technology!_") affixed to their Planetary Instrument of Appropriation, held at the UN vaults in Geneva. It would take several hundred universe lifetimes to copy them exactly, if one was long-lived and stupid enough. Cally and Roger's versions would decay within minutes of being taken away from their body's electric field.

'We have these. And the file in Geneva. Nobody can come in here and steal this planet from us.' She felt strangely parochial, using the word "steal" about a whole planet.

Roger folded his arms and wondered to himself.

Worst case scenario: assume that IMC – motto "We Can Shift Planets!" – actually were here, having arrived and landed illegally. The only way to remove them was either a resort to violence, which would result in a lot of deaths whether the colonists succeeded or not, or to contact Earth and light a fire under the UN in the hope of getting a paramilitary task-force despatched.

Best case scenario: these two strangers were lying, or mistaken. IMC was not here, and – and what reason would they have to lie?

He gestured to Kreurke to bring them over.

'When did you arrive on Hargreave's Fall?'

The small man, in his curious beige suit and hat, stuck the novelty umbrella under his arm and looked serious and sympathetic.

'Six days ago.'

From his viewpoint, the Doctor wondered if honestly really was the best policy. Once he had announced his arrival, the colonists were supposed to accord him a healthy dose of respect out of his lack of threat, after which they would eat out of his generously outstretched palm.

'You tried to stake a claim to Hargreave's Fall by arriving before us?' quizzed Roger, with an expression that had been growing ever more thunderous.

'No!' declared the Doctor and Ace together.

'How did you get from there to here?' asked Kreurke, getting to what he considered the meat of the question.

'Oh, we have our own transport,' airily replied the Doctor, dismissively waving a hand.

'What's in the bag, young fem?' asked one of the blue-suited colonists.

'My things,' said with an air of sulky defiance by Ace. "Young fem" indeed!

At a gesture from Kreurke, one of the armed escorts dropped their sack, which gave a dull, resounding thump on the bare decking. Next Ace knew, an had arm whipped her rucksack away from her whilst others from the escort crowded her, preventing any rescue of her precious rucksack.

'Give that back! It's mine!' yelled Ace, incensed at the theft of her most intimate possessions.

'Oh? And what is this?' asked one of the searchers, holding up a silver can.

'Oh. Er - '

'Ace!' scolded the Doctor. 'You didn't!'

'It's only one can, Professor,' she mumbled, looking in embarrassment at the deck plates.

'For heaven's sake, don't drop that!' warned the Doctor, looking and sounding genuinely alarmed. 'You'll put a hole in the deck and probably kill us all!'

Gingerly, the woman who'd clutched the can of Nitro-Nine put it down over in a corner, in an angle between two suspension units.

'You brought a bomb into HQ!' gasped Dean, able to articulate what the other colonists were still loose-jawed about.

'Technically not a bomb,' the Doctor hurried to say. 'Rather an, er, "explosive device".'

Mister Cormelle was looking at the pair of them with a mixture of horror and loathing.

'We don't have, and hoped never to need, a prison. However, I can see we need to start building one straight away. A bomb!'

Against one or two guards they might have gotten away, but not against the dozen who moved in simultaneously.

'Really! IMC are here!' shouted the Doctor as the pair were led away by unkind hands. 'With a mercenary force to back them up!' Sudden inspiration struck him. 'And they're probably jamming you already by - '

At which point they were shoved beyond the airlock entrance and out of earshot. Their guards were firm, not being cruel or abusive, yet there was no doubt that they meant business with this pair of bizarre, bomb-carrying intruders.

'Sorry, Professor,' muttered Ace. 'I completely forgot. Being out here it never seemed to be needed.'

A patter of footsteps on the decking behind them became a clatter and Evan caught up with them.

'Kreurke! Stop! I need to speak to him - ' pointing at the Doctor. Their escort came to a halt, looking at the upright Belgian, who blinked and opened his mouth in a manner similar to a fish.

'You mentioned jamming. Jamming! How did you know? We can't receive or broadcast to the comsats in orbit. I put it down to local distortions. Jamming!'

The young man barely took in Ace, who had insultingly stuck her tongue out at him earlier in passing. No, he was concentrating on the Doctor with wide-eyed enthusiasm, not bothered that the escort looked at him with disdain.

'Knock it on the head, Evan. This man's a saboteur or a spy or a lunatic,' warned one of them.

'Well, strange that he should solve the problem of our faulty comms in two seconds flat!' replied Evan, hotly. 'How's it being done?'

As was his habit, the Doctor cradled one elbow in the other hand and pursed his lips.

'At a guess, they're using a comsat of their own in close proximity to your own, with a sweep broadcast up and down the wavelengths at randomly differing amplitude and frequency. That would block any useful message you tried to get out without - ' and he illustrated the dancing frequencies with birdlike flutterings of his hand.

'Yes, yes, without looking immediately like jamming!' burst in Evan.

Dean came to catch up with the party.

'Mister Cormelle came to see what sent you haring off like a sprinter,' he asked, casting a suspicious eye over the guards and prisoners. 'Why aren't these two out of HQ?'

Evan, fired up by youthful enthusiasm, grabbed the Doctor's arm and dragged him back into the passenger hall, barrelling into and past the escort.

'Mister Cormelle! Mister Cormelle!' he shouted, still partially dragging the Doctor. 'He's right about the jamming!'

Briefly, and with pauses to simplify the technical terms, he described the symptoms that the communication gear had undergone: no message able to be sustained for more than a fraction of a second regardless of which wavelength was used, nor for how long. Jamming their signals would explain this phenomenon perfectly, and the only reason he hadn't suspected it was because there _was_ no reason to suspect it because there was no reason to suspect IMC were here already.

Cormelle looked at both Evan and the Doctor with calculating intensity.

'The issue is still in doubt. Evan, accompany the escort and this man's partner. Doctor, your companion will be hostage to your good behaviour. Now – tell me what you know.'

Ace found herself in the company of the intense young man, Evan, who returned without the Doctor. If the stupid colonists were going to listen to the Gallifreyan it was about time!

'Come on,' said Kreurke, jabbing a thumb into Ace's midriff.

'Oi! Hands off, you!'

'She's _my_ responsibility,' declared Evan. 'Mister Cormelle said so. Right, the rest of you can go get your bags of mixed veg. Manny, you stay with us and try to look stern and menacing.'

The mention of Cormelle's delegation to Evan stopped any argument before it began. Manny was a skinny young girl, who struggled to look even serious, let alone stern as her fellows returned to the passenger hall.

'Come on,' instructed Evan. 'Hey, are you hungry?'

'A bit peckish,' admitted Ace. 'I've not had my lunch yet.'

Evan consulted his watch.

'It's nearly time for our shift to get fed. Come with us and you can have some Cogg.'

"Cogg" turned out to be slang for the catering supplies purchased from Coggins, who specialised in food for starships. Dehydrated, reconstitituted, concentrated, compressed – Evan chattered on about the food to Ace whilst shovelling it down. It was plain fare, and mysterious in look and texture. There was enough to kill the hunger pangs, which counted for a lot.

'Why are you lot so suspicious of the Doctor and me?' asked Ace, when she'd finished the last of a thin flat bread.

'Are you serious?' asked the hitherto silent Manny.

'Well, yeah. Otherwise I wouldn't ask the question.'

Evan shrugged and opened his arms wide.

'We can't go back. These starships are built for only one outbound journey. Even if we didn't recycle them, they aren't fit to take off again, ever.'

'Tell her about the money,' said Manny.

'That too. Everyone here on this expedition sold everything they had to finance it. We've nothing left on Earth. Even Mister Cormelle, and he was a billionaire.'

He stole a piece of bread from Manny's plate.

'Then you show up, saying that IMC are here, panic panic, you have to leave.' His pale brown eyes stared back at her. 'We can't leave. Alive or dead, we're staying here.'

_You had to say that last sentence_, thought Ace. _Jinxer!_


	4. Chapter 4

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FOUR

Whilst Ace indulged in eating and gossip, the Doctor faced a far harder audience: Roger Cormelle, and his selected group of colony leaders.

For all that they had disbelieved him at first, they did at least accord him the courtesy of an uninterrupted hearing. Painstakingly, he described his arrival on Hargreave's Fall, the idyll of a relaxing, unspoilt wilderness to mentally unwind in. Then the intrusion of the colonists, and the belated realisation that IMC were there, too. The actual details of travel in the TARDIS he left deliberately vague – a time-travelling alien humanoid from the far-future would be egging the pudding a bit too much.

After that, he described how IMC would begin Phase Two, the despatch of mobile factory-creating factories before moving onto Phase Three, construction of robotic mining equipment, and Phase Four – total hemispheric devastation.

'You seem very well acquainted with how the Planet Shafters operate,' remarked a Chinese woman, coolly.

Sitting comfortably cross-legged on the decking, the Doctor made a _tch_ of annoyance.

'By the same token your medical staff are familiar with how diseases work, madam? Such a familiarity doesn't mean they intend to spread epidemics. First, know your enemy.'

That created a stir.

' "Enemy"?' asked a tall, balding man perched on the edge of a suspension unit. He looked sideways at Roger Cormelle. 'How are IMC your enemy?'

A sneer played at the corners of the little Time Lord's mouth.

'I'm a professional monster-slayer. That includes institutional ones. I've met IMC twice before: won one, lost one.'

At that he could tell their attention was more involved on his story than his presence or intent, especially at the question Cormelle threw at him.

'Where and when?'

'First time on Uxarieus, year Two Four Seven Two. Their operation was considerably smaller then, merely a single ship, which still required armed force from the colonists to repel. Second time, Two Four Eight Two on Gedovitz' World. They won that time, by using the factory-make-factory tactic for the first time at the expense of the entire native population. Needless to add, that process is a lot faster and more efficient now.'

Several faces expressed surprise at the mention of "Uxarieus", Cormelle most of all.

Roger felt his cheeks flush in surprise. Uxarieus!

As part of the long, expensive consultation process the UN demanded, he'd read extensively about Uxarieus. Too far away and too expensive and too time-consuming to travel there, so he'd been forced to be satisfied with ultra-light communications with them. Yes, they told him, their initial years had been barren and on the borderline of disaster. Failing crops, hostile natives, then to cap it all the arrival of IMC. All those problems had been solved with the help of – with the help of –

'Good God above!' he blurted. ' "A mysterious stranger called The Doctor with his young female assistant".

'Er – yes?' replied the Doctor, slightly worried at the extreme response.

'Why didn't you say you'd helped the colonists on Uxarieus!'

'You never asked,' shrugged the Doctor, secretly pleased at the direction this inquisition was taking.

A keen-eyed woman sitting next to Cormelle stared hard at the Doctor, who smiled and nodded politely back.

'_That_ Doctor? From Uxarieus?' and she squinted at him. 'That was over thirty years ago.' Left unsaid was the fact that he didn't look old enough to have been there, done that, and be here.

'Hair dye,' sighed the Doctor. 'Vanity, I know.' The twinkle in his eye left the watcher unsure whether he was joking or not. 'And a different companion, too,' he added.

Colonel Hawkwood rubbed the scar over his left eye, a relic of his days in the ANZAC Solar Expeditionary Corps. It tended to throb a little in humid weather, or when he felt stressed, or both simultaneously.

The men, he decided, were not getting stretched enough. Setting up Camp Bassinette had taken time and energy and diverted their attention to the task in hand, for only as long as it had taken to complete. Now there had been a rash of senseless fights, drug intoxications and sentries asleep at posts.

Action! He raged silently. Action would automatically and instantly bond the merc brigade together like nothing else would.

Yet here they were, sitting in a giant scar in the landscape, babysitting IMC's spaceships and excavation equipment, going nowhere, slowly suffering terminal loss of morale. The only people who stayed sharp were the frigate crews, who'd have to launch at a moment's notice in order to mount an interception.

IMC didn't want any overt action against the civilians here unless they gave the word. "Political expediency", their chief negotiator smarmed. "Gutless dithering" was how the mercenary's commanders described it.

Standing up and pushing his chair back, the officer strode across the spartan steel building to examine a topographical survey map that displayed their own landing site and that of the civvies. His skeleton staff, playing cards at the radio station, abruptly cocked their heads and watched their leader.

'You can use that pack of cards to good purpose,' he snapped, businesslike as usual. 'Allocate a suite to each company. Allocate even numbers to even-numbered platoons, odd numbers to odd-numbered platoons.'

B Company's 3 and 5 platoons emerged as those selected.

'Officially, they're on a long-range recon. Cut orders to that effect. Have their lieutenants see me face-to-face in five.'

One assistant began laboriously inputting march orders, supplies, transciever codes and personnel into a computer, that printed the end result on two flexible metallic rolls. Sergeant Hines, the unofficial liaison with IMC, would run over with it later on and take a copy to each of the heads of the excavation department and the Security Force, IMC's private army.

A pair of junior officers, clad in disruptive pattern camouflage uniforms and sporting the trademark grey fatigue cap of The Hawks, came into the command shack and saluted.

'What's your platoon status?' asked Hawkwood.

'Five under-strength, sir,' replied the first officer.

'Two under-strength, sir,' added the second. 'Plus one banged-up in the cells for being drunk and disobedient.'

Hawkwood frowned. In the army, they had tradition and history to maintain morale. In his merc force, they had either action or diversions, and out in this giant planet-wide jungle there were no diversions.

'Right. You two saddle up a light armour detachment, a couple of gun trucks and APC's, with a spare APC carrying zero passengers.'

He showed them the wall-mounted map.

'Officially you are on a long-range recon, working outwards in a spiral pattern from the site, which is what IMC have been told.' Turning back to the two young officers, he looked directly at them. 'In reality, I want you to get up to the colonist's landing site. Kidnap about a dozen of them. Live ones.'

Neither officer looked bothered by this instruction. In their time, they'd killed unarmed civilians with no compunction at all. Kidnapping worried them even less.

'Do we have accurate satellite coverage of the ground in between, sir?' asked one. 'We'll need a couple of hours to plot a route across rivers and gorges and suchlike.' The other officer looked at the map closely, measuring off distance with his fingers.

'About two days there, two days back. Do you want to leave a trace at their landing zone, sir?'

The Colonel twisted his mouth and thought.

'No. Don't want to lose the element of surprise. Low body count, if possible, and concealed at all costs.'

'Then add another day for covert observation and infiltration, sir. Five days overall.'

'See to it. Dismissed.'

With a pair of smart salutes, the officers left in a hurry to get their planning done, excited at the prospect of action, even if it was against a bunch of witless farmers.

The colonel sat down to go over the lack of equipment they were currently suffering from. Nothing heavier than a wheeled combat car, damn it! Artillery still restricted to tubes, no particle beam weapons, and no crew skilled in their use even if they did get the up to date stuff.

Damn that last campaign on Vita Brevis! Heavy casualties and being on the losing side meant The Hawks were back where they were five years ago.

'Yo. Boss,' greeted a lanky man wearing combat fatigues and major's insignia. He pulled the privacy screen around the table and sat down without being invited. 'I bring news from IMC.'

'Which is?'

'Good to go in forty-eight hours. They're still levelling and grading so the mobile factories can get out of this valley.'

'Two days! Yakov, don't they have any sense of urgency? I told them – landing here may make you harder to spot, but it's harder to get out of.'

The major shrugged.

'I know, boss. Another two days with the men kicking their heels at lack of action.'

Hawkwood regarded the other officer with his usual mix of appraisal and realism. Yakov was no more than competent, and, like every other merc officer in the formation, not to be fully trusted.

'Anything else?'

'Only the same sneering dislike from Security Force. Seem to think they could do our job better.'

Hawkwood snorted in silent amusement.

'Hardly the reason for hiring us!' He became serious and leaned closer to the Russian. 'I've put a little information-acquisition project in motion, something to allow us to get information at first hand, instead of having it filtered via the Planet Shafters.'

The major leaned in closer to reply.

'Good! I don't trust them at all. Not at all. I firmly believe they want to set us up to take any blame that comes out of this op.'

Quite right, too. Hawkwood hated these "deniable" operations. Nothing to incriminate either side, and equally, nothing to oblige the employer to pay up, either. You could guarantee, one hundred and ten per cent, that there were a dozen different factions within IMC, all competing for power. Any combination of those would gladly use the mercenaries to embarrass any of the other factions, whatever that meant happening to the mercs in the process.

'Yakov, see if IMC are going to be mining and refining power metals. We could do with a few pocket nukes, after losing our stockpile on Brevis.'

The major regarded his superior with mild alarm.

'Boss, they aren't going to give us anything fissile! That costs them profits.'

Hawkwood shrugged.

'We might have to defray a percentage of our end-of-contract bonus in payment.'

Yakov gave an _ahh_ of comprehension – the end-of-contract bonus was frequently reneged on, and it was a wise commander who mortgaged it against immediate needs.

Whilst his subordinate was realising this, Hawkwood's thoughts turned to other potential sources of income – eighty-thousand of them.

Having partly won over the Cormelle mission's leading lights, the Doctor attempted to capitalise on their grudging acceptance, only to encounter a human quality he found infuriating and inspiring in equal amounts: stubbornness.

These colonists weren't going home.

'It's simply impossible,' stated the tall, balding man who was known as "Beauclaire". 'These spaceships are one-way craft. They are engineered to make one planetfall and not to lift off again.'

'You still have the cargo hauliers,' reminded the Doctor, gently, to a snort from the Chinese woman.

'Unpressurised hulls with no life support! They aren't built to carry human passengers, thank you very much. Trying to get rid of us again?'

'Insurance,' reassured the Doctor. 'Just in case.'

Dean, the troubleshooter, brandished a rifle.

'Hey, we're not helpless. We've got five hundred of these. We can fight them!'

'No!' snapped the Doctor, and everyone present felt the cold, hard power underneath the word. 'I counted three thousand mercenaries, with helicopter gunships and wheeled armoured vehicles. They'd massacre you in short order. You can't face either them or IMC's internal security alone, never mind together, and the moment you start waging open warfare they'll both act against you.'

Roger Cormelle took charge at that point.

'Brainstorm session,' he said, loudly and clearly. 'I want all of you to put your heads together and come up with a solution, or solutions. Ones that don't involve large numbers of us dying.'

Having set them up, he strolled over to the Time Lord and wordlessly indicated a side passage off to one side of the passenger hall.

OBSERVATION PORT stated the legend over the entranceway, repeated in Chinese below.

'I used to come and look out of here when we were travelling,' confided the mission leader in a low voice. 'Oh, you couldn't actually see much out there – faster-than-light travel distorts everything into a kind of grey blur – yet it helped me to keep a perspective. Why we were travelling here.'

The Doctor recognised a man about to declare an epiphany. They reached a computer screen that transmitted the view from outside via piezo-electric crystals.

A sweeping expanse of grassland, now overlaid with tent cities, marking tapes and robust plastic sheeting laid by the robot machinery, greeted them when the screen was turned on.

Cormelle looked to the limit of the screen, left, right, up and down.

'Beautiful. Back home you had to travel for an hour and a half to see anything green and growing.' He darted a look at his sole listener. 'I'm quite the hypocrite, you know. "IMC the evil enemy".'

'You were a major shareholder?' guessed the Doctor, making Cormelle wince a little.

'Yes. Three and a half per cent preferential stock. Sold long ago to help fund this mission. Anyway – as I said, Doctor, quite the hypocrite. I never bothered about IMC until my son died. That single event made me take stock of my life, my family, where we were going, to what end I was working.'

'One of the first toxic smogs to come off the Great Lakes?' guessed the Doctor, again accurately. This time Cormelle's eyes widened.

'You can't read minds, can you! Yes. The Lake Ontario Shroud. It killed him and twenty thousand others. How did you know? It's something I've never made public.'

'By accent you're Canadian, so there's a good chance you lived near one of the Great Lakes. Only a sudden and shocking event would make you question your life and lifestyle. Those first poisonous smogs took everyone by surprise, without masks. Quite logical.'

Cormelle eyed the little, strangely-dressed man with growing respect. A sharp and functional intellect lay beneath that deceptive exterior!

'Yesss. Well, that was the catalyst for Cally and myself. We toured the globe, getting together like-minded people who could afford to help fund this mission, for seven years. We have literally nothing left on Earth to return to – no money, no homes, no property. Given what we've come from, which my colonists can now see for what it is – an overcrowded, polluted hellhole – there's no way we're going back.' He took a deep breath. 'We're not out to recreate Earth. We intend to create something better. Our guiding principle all along has been that we will not destroy this world.'

Abruptly, the Doctor's mood changed, in one of his swings from gloom to glee. He made the mental switch from wishing to avoid a confrontation to seeing that one was inevitable, and he'd better be along to make sure the damage was limited to the minimum. To Roger this volte-face was shown in the little man pacing up and down the short Observation Port corridor, hands clutched together behind his back, frowning in concentration.

'IMC aren't invincible,' he began.

'No,' agreed Roger. 'Just extremely hard to beat!'

'They didn't win on Uxarieus.'

'You said there was only one ship.'

'And only one ship of colonists. Ever heard of Herwald?'

Taken aback at the abrupt shift, Roger shook his head. In fact he had, in passing. The details escaped him.

'IMC were fought to a standstill there by the Dragoman settlers.'

Roger's UN briefings of many years ago came back to him.

'Oh – yes, I recall now. Hey, the Dracks were militaristic loons armed to the teeth! And they still suffered half the planet turned into a slag-heap.'

Coming to a stop, the Doctor looked directly into Roger's eyes, a gaze that hinted at wisdom acquired over time. A long time. A very, very long time.

'They still had half the planet to themselves, without IMC. And a planet will heal if left alone.'

'Mister Cormelle? Captain Husak's here,' shouted one of the elect from the passenger hall. Roger sighed and made to leave, coming to a stop as a grip like iron fastened around a bicep.

'There is a window of weakness for IMC,' said the Doctor quietly. 'If you are willing to follow my lead, we can get rid of them without bloodshed. If you are serious about settling here permanently. If!'

Captain Husak rarely looked happy. Today his normal stern expression had softened to the extent of merely looking sombre. He further brightened when Roger came back into the echoing steel hall.

'Mister Cormelle. Good news. We have completed the deployment of your plant equipment.'

'Excellent!' declared Roger, and the other leading staff looked satisfied, too.

The Doctor kept his own counsel. He felt pretty sure he knew what would happen now, one of only two options, neither of which were exactly appealing.

The Captain's aide offered an electronic writing pad to Roger, who signed-off on the contract and shook hands.

'May I interrupt?' asked the Doctor, in a tone that brooked no discussion and laying his umbrella handle over the officer's arm. The starchy, proper Czech looked the small man up and down with puzzlement.

'For what reason? We are now departing.'

'Could you please only take off one at a time?'

Husak looked at Roger, who smiled ruefully and shrugged.

'Humour him, Captain. He's helped us already.'

With a twitch of the eyebrow, Captain Husak agreed. Lofting to orbit in such an inefficient manner would add at least ninety minutes to their total departure time. However, they didn't have another contract to service yet – and ninety minutes was small beer compared to the months they'd spend travelling back to a near-Earth orbit.

Ace had found a novel entertainment – teasing the heavy mechanical plant that plodded, rolled or drove across the landing zone. No matter how large the equipment, if you spoke to it in a sufficiently loud voice, it would divert to pay attention to you. If you stood in front of it, then it would patiently go round you. If you asked questions, then the robots would try to answer as best they could. Since their on-board intelligence was formatted for agriculture, mining, drilling, surveying, roadlaying or quarrying, any philosophical questions caused them problems.

'Can you imagine the sound of one hand clapping?' she tried on a flat, tracked vehicle that included a mass of vanes and antennae.

"THIS UNIT IS NOT CAPABLE OF ABSTRACT CONCEPTIONS. PLEASE STEP ASIDE YOUNG FEM" boomed the unit, causing Ace to bounce pebbles off it's matte black exterior.

Young fem! A shame her NitroNine had been confiscated or she'd show this mobile box of bolts how fem she was!

'Can you not abuse the machines, please?' asked one of the colonists, walking past carrying scaffolding. 'They're expensive.'

'And I'm bored!' she replied. Evan had left her to go and fiddle with his radio gear, trying to break the jamming. So far without success, she guessed, since he still wasn't around.

The colonist, a brawny, dark-skinned man, stopped and turned to look at Ace.

'Bored? Oh – you're that stranger. Do you want something productive to do?'

'Sure!' chirped the young woman.

'Grab the end of these scaffolding poles and help me carry them. We're heading for the prepped space over there,' and he indicated a hectare of plastic sheeting. Other scaffolding already lay on the groundsheet, looking for all the world like giant grey strands of spaghetti.

'What are we building?' asked Ace. The man chuckled.

'Don't remember inviting you to join in!'

'I'm Ace,' she said, by way of an introduction, holding out a hand. The stranger gave a firm handshake.

'Colin Apaha. We are building a temporary hospital here. More like an emergency clinic, really, until the permanent version gets erected.'

Looking from side to side, Ace saw only herself and Colin.

'Shift lunch. They'll be along shortly,' he explained. 'Any good with scaffolding?'

Ace was; she had an AVCE in scaffolding, acquired because it was such a useful skill, not to mention being as utterly unladylike a course as she could imagine.

Colin eyed her up and down, making Ace worry that he was going to make a pass.

'That's not really suitable clothing for the kind of work we'll be doing,' he said, before scribbling instructions on a sheet of paper. 'Take this over to New New York - ' pointing at a tent city 'ask for the seamstress and you'll get an issue suit.'

Ten minutes later, after changing behind a canvas screen, a sleek young lady in a flattering boilersuit rejoined Colin and his newly-arrived helpers at the soon-to-be hospital site.

'Yes?' said Colin, before slapping his forehead. 'Didn't recognise you! Nice togs!'

Ace gave a twirl, grinning.

'She resewed a suit off-the-peg. I wish I'd had someone that clever with a needle back home!'

That was all the levity suffered for a good hour at the site whilst the dozen workers struggled with a framework of poles and connectors, collars and bolts. By that time the skeleton of the infirmary had been erected, and Ace had satisfied her curiosity – as much as it could ever be – by chatting to the variegated workers.

She had noticed an absence amongst the camps. Not at first, and not quickly. It slowly dawned on her, whilst clamping connections onto poles, that there were no children in view. No creche, no mention of children amongst the people working with her, no kids running around, no toys, no ructions or squabbles or crying. If Earth was an overcrowded, pollution-ridden slum, you'd expect kids to be running absolutely wild out here. Yet – nothing.

Another stocky, dark-skinned man who looked like Charlie's cousin explained.

'No children under sixteen allowed along. Too risky for the first ten years or so for nippers. That's not to say we won't start having sprogs left, right and centre if it all pans out here.'

Ace was taken with his idiom, and his accent.

'Australian, right?'

He looked mock offended.

'Maori, fem, Maori!' he winked. 'I can show you me tattoos …'

Finally, they began to drag huge sheets of heavy-duty plastic sheeting over the scaffolding frame, using heat guns to weld the plastic to the metal skeleton, a process that generated acrid smoke and smells.

A vantage point of fifty metres above ground level gives one a certain perspective. Lofty, refined, whilst not completely losing touch with the earth beneath one's feet.

Of course, also being in a staff position that meant not having to get hands dirty or clothing rumpled also helped to maintain a degree of separation from the _hoi polloi_, the lumpen-proletariat blue collars who constituted most of the IMC personnel on-site.

Thus ran the musings of Senior Comptroller Rickenhaus, standing at the vast picture window in his personal suite, looking out at the extensively prepared valley outside.

It ran counter to intuition, waiting like this. For a prospective major project, however, he had to put up with the delays. The four initial mobile factories needed gentle gradients, well-bedded, without surface water or significant obstructions in order to actually make it out of the valley, which meant a great deal of grading the jungle and underlying soils.

A swirl of activity in the mercenary camp caught his eye. Figures were running from the hardstands where one of the dangerous-looking atmosphere combat craft was firing up it's engines. With a window-rattling bang the aircraft shot off the gravel and into the air.

Rickenhaus squinted his eyes and pursed his lips in disapproval. They – "The Hawks" – hadn't bothered to inform him what they were up to. He distrusted them quite as much as they no doubt distrusted him, and they divulged as little information to IMC as they could get away with.

Freelancers! He scorned them, silently. Expediency demanded their presence. An idea came fully-formed to his mind and he called his personal assistant.

'Hetty. How much do we have in the, uh, Allocatable Discretionary Fund?' Which sounded so much better than "The Bribe Money Fund".

A single second's check was all his highly efficient PA needed.

'One hundred and forty five thousand nemmies, sir.'

'Draw five hundred, mark it down as "staff expenses".'

Ha! Mercenaries. Only interested in mayhem and money. Well, he'd see what information he could obtain with a bit of judicious bribery. He needed an inside man who would pass on more data than the bland announcements Hawkwood delivered when prodded. That Yakov chap seemed pliable enough.


	5. Chapter 5

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER FIVE

Ponderously, with a great rumbling and roaring of ground-effect engines, the first of the heavy cargo hauliers began to lift off from it's landing site. They had chosen to land well away from the rest of the colony ships for a very good reason – the blast created by take-off, which sent an artificial tornado tearting across the settlement.

Sitting down to a well-earned meal with the other workers who'd been constructing the infirmary, Ace covered her bowl of rice and beans with both hands to stop grit and dust settling on top of it. The Doctor must still be chinwagging with the higher-ups of the colony, she decided, which left her to get on with obtaining information about the colony at the literal ground level.

Evan and Manny tracked her down, the latter looking rather sheepish at having let her charge get out of sight and reckoning.

'Any luck with the jamming?' asked Ace straightaway, trying to get the conversation going on her terms.

Evan shook his head, dispirited and rather grumpy at having failed.

'No success at all. To be honest, I think you'd need all sorts of high-powered military comm gear to break through their jamming. Bit academic now, anyway.'

Before replying, Ace filled a pitta bread with the rice and beans, then added a dash of chilli sauce. She'd worked hard for this and she was going to enjoy it!

'Why's that?'

Manny nodded at the cargo hauliers. A second ship had it's lights on, including flashing red ones at all the cardinal nodes of the hull.

'That's why. Once they get into orbit they can signal. One's gone up already, and that one's on a ten minute warning.'

Normally this would have been quite correct, except that the next ten minutes brought the return of the first haulier, on a rapid descent. When it had landed and the dust storm settled, Ace could see blackened scorch marks along one side, as if giant sooty fingers had been playing there.

'Oh. Now, that's not good,' muttered Evan.

At HQ, Roger listened to a very angry Captain Husak complaining about the mercenary orbital warcraft that had detonated a low-yield warhead a mere half-kilometre from the Green Line 107. "Turn back or die" had been the terse instruction from the hired killers.

'You expected this, didn't you?' asked one of the mission leaders.

'No,' replied the Doctor. 'Quite the opposite.' There were expectant looks from those listening to him. 'It makes sense for IMC to allow you off-planet, so they have no interference to worry about.'

Beauclaire and Dean approached Roger.

'Mister Cormelle, our brainstorming came up with a solution as to why there are mercenaries in the pay of IMC.'

Theatrically, the Doctor listened in, and found himself agreeing wholeheartedly.

The reason for hiring freelance soldiers? In a word, "deniability". They would be there to police the colonists, to make sure that there were no attacks on IMC equipment or property, no guerilla warfare, and to administer several massacres too, no doubt, all the better to cow the colonists. None of which could be laid at the feet of IMC, since any agreement or contract between mining company and mercenaries would be strictly verbal. If the UN's space-going paramilitary police arm showed up, then IMC could maintain an air of injured innocence. What's that, officer? Oh, no, we have no connection with these nasty mercenaries. Simply a coincidence that they landed at the same location as us. Paperwork? What's that?

Mind you, continued the Doctor's train of thought, the brainstormers didn't go far enough.

'Can I add a point?' he asked, carrying on without waiting for a reply. 'Your point about a verbal contract is quite telling. As you correctly deduce, neither side wants evidence lying about, so there are no written or electronic agreements. Immediately, that places an obligation of trust on both parties.'

Amused or disgusted snorts came from everyone present.

'Exactly!' grinned the Doctor, his expressive face animated in gleeful satisfaction. 'Two basically untrustworthy, unreliable parties having to trust and rely on each other. We can work with that. Nor is that all. IMC would be quite happy to see you all leave Hargreaves Fall on the cargo hauliers because it makes their job so much easier, therefore action preventing that departure by the mercenaries is, I think, part of their own agenda entirely different from the miners.'

'Why don't they want us to leave?' asked Wong.

Any amusement disappeared from the Doctor's face.

'Slaves! They see an opportunity to round up eighty thousand slaves. All healthy adults aged from adolescence to mid-thirties. You could net them several hundred million nemmies if they find buyers.'

Roger bit his lip. Offhand, he could think of a dozen commercial entities who would gladly buy slaves on the underground market, let alone other settled worlds looking for expendable labour.

Having seen the conversation and consensus become focussed around their impossible plight, the Doctor deemed the time right to put forward his suggestion. Right on cue, Ace arrived, wearing a grubby grey boilersuit and eating an apple.

'Professor! Hey, I've been helping build an infirmary,' she cheerfully informed him. 'Why all the long faces?' she asked, it having dawned upon her that these people didn't seem anywhere near as cheerful as she did.

'The Green Line ships have been prevented from leaving, Ace. That means no SOS sent to Earth, and no escape route for the colonists.'

'Bummer,' she judged, making the Doctor tut in annoyance at the vulgarism. 'So they stay and fight?'

Cally jumped in before anyone else could.

'Apparently not! We haven't got the arms or numbers to fight successfully, according to your – your friend.'

Tipping his hat back, the Doctor assumed what Ace called his "Lecturer" posture.

'Madam, I only resort to violence when all else has failed. As yet, there is another tactic we might use to completely confound IMC.'

'Which is?' asked another of the staff.

'Deception! Subterfuge. Espionage. Taking advantage of how the corporation and the mercenaries view each other, without having to fire a shot.'

He began to explain about sabotaging IMC's planetary databank: amending their acquired information, deleting parts of it, adding other information. The internal politics, cliques and tensions within IMC would help make his substitution more credible.

'Wait a minute,' interrupted Roger. 'Allow us to help. You don't mind a few constructive suggestions?'

Ace sniggered quietly at the Doctor's plan being upstaged by the mission leader. The Time Lord favoured her with a frosty glance, then looked back at Roger with a nod. He and the other staff went into a huddle, muttering intently.

Five minutes later, Roger gave the Doctor a sheet of paper with their suggestions added.

"One: no covert activity. Be open and bold, as if you belonged.

Two: go as a VIP, with a Personal Assistant.

Three: if willing, Ace would be the best choice as PA, since she knows you well.

Four: contact the mercenaries as well, but don't let IMC know"

Giving a complicated trilling whistle, the Doctor nodded. He'd already intended doing One and Four.

'Are you up for it, Ace?'

'Yes!' she said, before he'd even finished asking the question.

Half an hour later Ace felt less committed to her initial impulsive reply. Being a Personal Assistant meant wearing skirt, blouse, tie, suit jacket, high heels and a severe bun. She looked like Office Tart Personified.

'Proper fem!' declared the seamstress who'd taken in the boilersuit for her, standing back and admiring her handiwork. She unrolled a sheet of reflective material that acted as a floor-length mirror and showed Ace what she looked like.

Blimey! I look like some wannabee from a temp agency! was her first impression.

The seamstress noticed this lack of enthusiasm.

'That's bespoke tailoring work, young fem. A thousand nemmies worth. You should behave as if you realised what you're worth. A bit of snooty, nose-in-the-air attitude.'

Neither of which came easily to the young woman.

'Sew a ruler into the back of her blouse,' suggested Cally unkindly when the pair returned to HQ. Roger tutted at his wife.

'Less of that! In fact, you can give her a few lessons on how to look the part.'

So, not entirely willingly, both Cally and Ace went through how to behave if one was a Personal Assistant. Roger took the Doctor aside.

'Look, doing this is really dangerous, Doctor. One slip and you'll be killed. Are you sure you want to go on with it?'

'Absolutely. We don't have time to come up with an alternative. As I said before, there is a window of opportunity here, which is currently narrowing as we speak.'

Roger looked unsure.

'How are you going to get there, anyway? We can let you use one of the helochopters to drop - '

A wave of the hand stopped him in mid-speech.

'Don't worry about that! I have my own – ah, _camouflaged_ transport.'

To save time, Roger called one of the surveying robots over to HQ from the entrance ramp.

'YES MISTER CORMELLE HOW MAY THIS UNIT SERVE' boomed the giant trapezoid., rumbling over the plastic path very carefully to avoid tearing it.

'Carry these two passengers to their transport, then return to your primary mission.'

The last he saw of the Doctor was that impish figure sitting, legs dangling over the edge of the instrument deck, an arm around the very prim and proper Ace, an appearance only spoilt by the presence of her rucksack.

Waving a sombre goodbye to Roger, Ace patted the black plastic exterior of the robot.

'Polite, aren't they?' she commented. Then, guiltily. 'I was teasing them before, asking hard questions and flicking pebbles at them.'

The Doctor steadied his umbrella upright against the platform they were sitting on.

'Hmm. Not very constructive, Ace. I would expect better of you.'

Ace patted the plastic again.

'Okay, okay, I officially apologise. There. Better?'

The Doctor rolled his eyes and made a rueful face. Always trying to have the last word!

'Actually, you make a valid point there, Ace. One of the reasons I'm working fast now to prevent mayhem in the future.' He felt the young woman's gaze on his face. 'These colony robots are all "HOH". Multiple redundant systems to ensure they "Harm No Human" – H Zero H. IMC's robotic equipment will be quite the opposite, able and capable of killing any human getting in their way.'

A nightmare memory came back, unbidden, from Uxareius: trapped by an IMC robot equipped with metre-long claws, able and capable of rending him into fragments. Of course back then they'd needed significant human intervention and input to function effectively. By now they'd be fully functional on their own. It didn't bear thinking about – tens of thousands of destructive, amoral machines encroaching on human settlers.

Slowing down gently, the Survey robot came to a halt.

'THIS UNIT CANNOT OPERATE IN UNCLEARED JUNGLE TERRAIN. IS THIS LOCATION ACCEPTABLY CLOSE TO YOUR FINAL DESTINATION?'

'Yes, thank you,' said the Doctor, jumping down and helping Ace make the five foot drop. From here it would be a short hike to the TARDIS.

'GOOD FORTUNE,' boomed the robot, reversing and driving back towards the settlement.

Ace looked at the trees with worry. Her companion showed no such uncertainty, striding boldly forward.

Shoulders aching and cramping, Dean dropped from the perilous perch he'd taken up underneath the Survey robot. He felt pleased at having diverted it from it's normal duties and to within hailing distance of HQ. His original intent had been to follow the two strangers when they left, making sure the robot didn't track them exactly in order to prevent them suspecting anybody on their trail.

Suspicion of _them_ was far too strong in him to overlook. He hadn't been impressed by the little man's insistence that they avoid weapons or fighting. Such piety! Of course, that moral stance played right into the hands of IMC and their hired hands. Plus, the coincidence of these mysterious strangers arriving at exactly the same moment as IMC and the colonists didn't bear examination.

Crouching low and moving in a duck-walk, he kept himself from being seen by either of the pair. Their eyes were firmly fixed on the jungle ahead.

Easier for me! he gloated. Long-ago lessons in How To Trail A Subject came back to him – normally undertaken in an urban environment, but the grass and trees out here would do just as well as walls or buildings.

They were talking again, and both suddenly ducked behind a tree.

Taken by surprise, Dean realised they must have spotted him and were trying to hide. He bounded forward on his long legs, then leapt to one side as he came past the tree, levelling his borrowed rifle.

Caught in the act, the good-looking girl had whirled around in surprise, adopting a fighting stance. The little man stood frozen in surprise also, inserting a key into – into a lock, a lock set into the trunk of a tree?

'Gotcha!' he growled, grinning in self-satisfied amusement. 'What you got in there? Radio gear? Reporting back to your paymasters, eh?'

The strange little man smiled a strange little smile.

'Oh no. "What I've got in here" is just a tad more sophisticated than a radio.'

When the lanky, crew-cut youth arrived at a run, the Doctor had given a start of surprise. Why ambush them outside the TARDIS? They'd already gone beyond detention and arrest and interrogation – unless this was a one-man show, a person who still suspected them of subterfuge.

Then came the accusation, which made him sigh out of weary disdain. Ace's response was a collection of muttered cursing.

'Care to take a look?' he asked, stepping back and pushing the doors open inwards.

Dean saw what had to be an optical illusion: a vertical crack seven feet tall opened in the tree trunk, the bark on either side of the gap folding inwards, and folding, and keeping on folding in a way that hurt his eyes.

Perhaps it was hollow? A vertical drop-tube to a hidden underground base?

Except that when he stepped forward, level with the opened trunk, he saw way into the interior of the tree; way _way_ into the interior. An interior easily big enough to accommodate a score of people, yet which managed to fit inside the bole of a tree less than a metre in diameter. Those same "doors" that had been only a hands-breadth across now swung inwards, a metre wide now.

'How – how do – how do you do that?' he asked, his mouth suddenly dry.

'Dimensionally transcendental,' said the girl in a cocky tone. 'Bigger inside than out.' The little man gestured her inwards, then stood on the entrance with a cocked eyebrow.

'Fancy a trip to put your fears at rest?'

'Huh?' managed Dean.

'Dangerous, so you probably won't want to come,' said the girl, in an off-hand way.

On legs that didn't work as well as they ought to, Dean entered the "tree" very gingerly. The doors swung shut behind him, making him whirl around in alarm.

'Would you mind putting that weapon out of harm's way?' asked the little man, politely, if with a touch of disapproval. Dean stared at the rifle, realising it had been pointing wildly in all directions and hastily slung it over his shoulder.

'What is this place?' he asked to everyone and no-one. The girl came out with an explanation that made even less sense than the eye-bending reality in front of him. The concepts of "Time" and "Spaceship" got assimilated.

'The Doctor's going to drop us right in the middle of the IMC camp. That way, we avoid all the guards and patrols and alarms and dogs and bear traps,' explained the girl, again making a lot less than common sense.

'Quite correct,' came an unbidden reply from the little man, busy twirling dials and pressing buttons, looking up at a scanner screen every few seconds. 'Tricky work, so please remain quietly baffled, Dean.'

Hetty buzzed the mercenary officer past the security door and into Senior Comptroller Rickenhaus' personal suite. She didn't like the rough, aggressive soldiery, who were several degrees less classy than IMC's own internal Security Force. At least SecFor had nice IMC-coloured livery. All The Hawks ever wore was combat gear or camouflaged space-suits.

Major Yakov stood at ease in the huge, plushly furnished room. The civvy High Lord God Of Everything pottered about in a corner watering a set of plants, wearing a dressing-gown – a dressing-gown! – and looking every inch the suburban gentleman at ease of a Sunday morning. He waved absently to Yakov, then stuck nutrient monitor rods in the plant pots.

'Interstellar travel doesn't really agree with them,' he said over a shoulder. 'But I would miss them if they all died off. Fresh oxygen, you see. Can't beat it.'

Sensibly, Yakov stayed silent – the high muck-a-muck would get to the point eventually, and it would probably consist of paying the major for a bit of spying on Hawkwood and other senior officers.

Rickenhaus pottered back over to Yakov, looking over his mother-of-pearl glasses at the officer.

'Take a seat,' he asked, and Yakov dropped himself onto the over-stuffed leather settee, carefully draping an arm over the side. 'I guess you know why I invited you up here?'

The officer nodded with a wry smile.

'I would hazard a guess at an inter-disciplinary liaison, with an honorarium or bursary attached?'

Rickenhaus didn't show any surprise at such a facile description of being asked to take a bribe to spy on his own people.

'Just so! Your Colonel doesn't have enough staff to pass adequate information on to me in a timely manner, which is why another channel of communication is needed,' and he beamed a big, bland smile. 'Why, there was that emergency jet take-off just now. _I _don't know what it was for.'

Sensing a deliberate opening, the major spoke up.

'Interceptor frigate launch. The Green Line ships were starting to take up orbital lofting shots, so we had to warn them down.'

For a second, a tiny frown appeared on Rickenhaus's features.

'Stop them leaving? They could get rid of those wretched stellar-squatters.'

Yakov shook his head and grinned.

'Sorry no. The moment those ships clear atmosphere, they'll signal Earth. You don't want the UN PPF noseying around here, do you?'

The Hawks certainly didn't – they were utterly outgunned and outnumbered by the PPF.

Rickenhaus's normal sunny disposition returned.

'There you go, Major! Earning your bursary already. Here, accept this chip coded for five hundred nemmies – an advance payment, if you like.'

With a casual grace that implied long experience of such payments, the chip card disappeared into Yakov's inner jacket pocket.

'Oh, by the way, expect a call from Colonel Hawkwood pretty soon. He's looking to get hold of refined fissile slurry once you've got to mining.'

'Oh?' commented the Comptroller, non-committally. Yakov noticed there was no instant dismissal of the idea.

'Ahum. Willing to trade off a percentage of the end-contract bonus in payment, so he said.'

The other man hummed tunelessly, rubbing his chin. Feeling that he'd invested wisely so far, he ushered the officer out, giving him a docket of paperwork to have signatures added to as an excuse for having to see the Senior Comptroller.

Hetty rang him shortly afterwards, announcing the Project Engineer.

There was no need for pleasantness with the engineer, a man firmly fixed below Rickenhaus on the corporate ladder.

'Yes what?' asked the Comptroller, brusquely.

Maarvelhoos, the engineer, swept his helmet off in approved style.

'Just to let you know, sir, the mobile plant will be ready to move in approximately four to six hours.'

Rickenhaus felt his mouth twist in a crooked smile. Always ready to bear good tidings, the Project Engineer – dubbed "Mister Marvelous" by the IMC staff, inevitably – yes, always ready to bear good tidings in person. Those long delays in preparation, they were delegated to minions or given over the comm system.

'I hope to see us rolling in less than six hours, Jaap. Thank you for the welcome news.'

With professional satisfaction, Rickenhaus rubbed his hands in anticipation when alone again. Six hours and they could start to really rip some money out of this planet! With his commission and possible bonuses for early completion – billions! Billions!

Major Yakov went straight to Hawkwood's HQ shed, pulling the privacy screen around himself and the senior officer. The colonel didn't speak, merely cocking an eyebrow.

'Pretty much as you expected, sir,' began the major. 'A bit of waffle concealing intent to bribe. Five hundred nemmies as an advance.'

'You can keep it,' growled Hawkwood. 'The bug works fine, by the way. The comm technie picked up gossip from Rickenhaus that they're ready to go in six hours or less.'

Calling it a "bug" was simplifying, considerably: the device was a specially tuned conducting filament, no thicker than a hair, and only a few inches long. Yakov had dropped it onto the carpet in Rickenhaus's personal suite specifically to pick up information that the mercenaries would not have been privy to otherwise.

'Informational inter-penetration,' said Yakov, brightly, to a look of mute disdain from the colonel.

A bewildered Dean clutched his rifle as if it were a lifebelt. In the insanity that prevailed all around him, the weapon was a tangible and concrete reminder of reality.

'Let me get this straight – you -' pointing at the Doctor. '- are from the future. You - ' pointing at Ace ' – are from the past. You hop around in time getting into hot water and out of it again.'

'Shhh!' hissed the Doctor. 'I'm nearly there at the hardest part.'

Ace put a finger to her lips and tugged Dean off into a corner.

'I think IMC will notice a tree landing in the middle of their quarry,' objected the youth. 'From what you say there's not a bit of greenery for a hundred hectares.'

The young woman tapped the side of her nose.

'It only looked like a tree 'cos it was in the middle of the jungle. Hopefully in the middle of a flock of spaceships, it'll look like another spaceship.'

Once again Dean felt unreality intruding.

'Now, since you're here, if uninvited, I think you can perform a useful function, young man.'

This sentence came from the Doctor, who appeared to have stopped bothering with controlling the TARDIS.

'I'm twenty six!' replied Dean, with vigour.

'_Relatively_ young,' butted in Ace. 'What can he be? A trouble-shooter?'

The Doctor's eyes lit up.

'Brilliant!' he enthused, the brogue coming over with a rolling of the "r". 'Not a trouble-shooter – say rather a bodyguard.'

Bustling in a way that prevented any discussion or objection, he ushered Dean off into one of the side-passages in the TARDIS.

'Get a suit off the peg, and make sure there's plenty of room under the armpit. Don't dawdle, we'll be landing in five minutes.'

By the time Dean returned to the central control room, having found a rather dashing three-piece pin stripe hung up in the third closet he tried, the Doctor had been busy with a laser saw, a buffer and an angle-grinder. He clutched a set of braces in one hand, and a needle rested in his hat band. Dean noticed both of these items, being good at observation, and chose not to ask. He'd only get a daft answer.

'Presto,' declared the little man, handing Dean his rifle. Or what was left of it. The stock had been removed entirely, and the barrel cut down by half a metre, leaving what looked like an over-sized handgun. A battered plastic holster marked "Eigenschaft der deutschen Randostpolizei" came with the gun. To Dean's surprise the weapon fitted very snugly.

'Put it under your left arm,' suggested Ace.

The Doctor clasped Dean's shoulders and stood back.

'Not bad for a rush job,' he mused. 'You need a steely glint in your eye. Yes! Think horrible thoughts about IMC. Now, let us beard the dragon in it's lair.'

The time rotor came to a resounding thumping halt and, with entirely comprehensible nervousness, the trio exited onto the bare and muddy valley floor of IMC's landing zone.


	6. Chapter 6

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SIX

Sergeant Slattery, the NCO in charge of the mercenaries radio shack, was first to catch sight of the trio of strangers meandering across the valley floor. He should have been checking the wavelengths that the colonists were using to try and communicate with Earth, but frankly it was dull work with no variety and that led to him staring out of the window.

Using the internal circuit, he got in touch with Colonel Hawkwood's comm technician.

'You expecting company?' he asked, careful not to use any official terminology.

'No. What company?'

'There's a funny-looking gaggle of civvies coming your way. Man in hat, tart in skirt and what looks like hired muscle.'

Forewarned, the colonel wasn't taken entirely by surprise when the threesome marched into his office unannounced. The "hired muscle" appeared to be a youngish man, tall and wiry, whose eyes flicked around the room and took in the exits, the windows, the colonel and the two radio operators. The man-in-hat was blocked from the colonel's view by the young man, making his eventual appearance even more surprising: a beige suit, a beige hat with red trim, red question mark motifs on his lapels and an umbrella. What must be a secretary trailed both men, looking studious in glasses and heels, carrying an electronic writing board.

'Which species of little lost lambs are you?' barked the officer.

'You didn't expect us?' asked the strange little man, mildly, bending forward at the waist to ask. His secretary noted a note on the pad.

'Course I didn't!' began the colonel, before the other man butted in, taking a completely different tone. His posture changed abruptly to one with all the rigidity of a gun barrel.

'Good. Then secrecy has been maintained. I am here, Colonel, to carry out a cost-benefit analysis on both you and your nominal employer.'

Mention of "costs" and "analysis" naturally caught the attention of the mercenaries.

'An audit,' added the secretary, with a tight, professional smile.

'We're not employed by IMC,' stated the colonel.

'Good, in that case it won't take you long to get off-world and away, then.'

The colonel stared in disbelief.

'Have you seen Rickenhaus yet?'

The little man's eyes glowed with malice. His presence seemed to loom larger in the sterile steel box, beyond his physical form.

'Rickenhaus, Colonel, is part of the problem! As I said, cost-benefit analysis. Why Rickenhaus decided to contract with you when IMC has a perfectly adequate internal security arm is beyond me, quite beyond me. I don't like paying twice over for a single service.'

Playing for time, the officer stood and stamped over to a window, looking out over Camp Basinette. One question he had, how this peculiar interloper got inside the perimeter, was answered instantly: a new arrival sat on the valley floor, a sleek, matt black personal transport. Expensive, having your own personal interstellar transport. Expensive, exclusive, and probably stuffed full of jamming and stealth technology that got it down on the ground unobserved.

'We don't have a written contract.'

'Pish!' snapped the little man. 'A legal tissue any counsel would shred in thirty seconds. I still haven't heard why you're being retained.'

'Shall I minute that, sir?' asked the secretary.

'Yes. I don't suppose you've taken precautions against these damn colonists waging guerilla warfare against IMC, have you? No, I thought not.'

Once again the colonel felt stunned by a divorce of events from reality.

'Guerilla warfare? Are you serious? Guerilla warfare! Listen, whoever you claim to be, those wretched farmers are half a world away without a weapon to their name. Guerilla warfare my eye!'

Taking a seat on the edge of one of the functional stools in front of Hawkwood's desk, the little man leant forward and rested his chin on both hands, which in turn leant upon his umbrella.

'You've not been given the full information concerning these "farmers", Colonel; Rickenhaus has one or two little secrets of his own. Why do you think IMC hired you? Oh – yes – make that "hypothetically" hired you.'

The colonel bristled, and even his radio technicians looked annoyed.

'Because we're experienced professional soldiers.'

Having found a paperweight manufactured from an inert Clockwork grenade, the annoying little man juggled it from one hand to the other.

'More likely that you come cheap and don't ask questions. Ah-ah! Don't look so mournful. You were hired to take the casualties that IMC's local Comptroller – Rickenhaus – didn't want to suffer. Dead employees are an expendable asset, but destroyed equipment has a capital valuation.'

Nonsense! retorted the colonel to himself. Nursemaiding construction plant, killing off unarmed farmers, then rounding up the survivors for a bit of slavery. Easy, low-risk, with a big pay packet at the end.

'You see, my sources tell me you've already encountered the colonist's bag of tricks that they brought from Earth with them. A self-sending trans-mat platform. Apparently they were using it to spy on you from the jungle edge.'

Despite himself, the colonel felt his stomach fall, and a nasty surge of adrenalin surged around his bloodstream.

'That's Level Five technology,' he protested. The mercs didn't have anything more sophisticated than Level Three. A self-sending trans-mat could turn up literally anywhere, out of thin air, and disappear there again. So that mysterious disappearing non-encounter, leaving a big square imprint in the soil at the jungle edge really had an explanation!

A series of curses ran across his thoughts. With a platform like that, the farmers could arrive on-site, carry out a sneak attack and be gone in seconds, long before The Hawks got a response together. Pre-fused bombs, canisters of gas, home-made napalm – Christ, even a starship engine plant run to critical and about to explode!

'Ah, comprehension dawns!' chuckled the little man. The smile vanished. 'I'm going to - '

With a resounding _bang!,_ an explosion shook the walls of the command shack, making the plastic windows rattle.

The tall, lanky youth promptly drew a concealed weapon, ducking down to peer out of the quaking windows, pressing down on the shoulder of the little man.

'Stay there for a minute, boss,' he said, crisply efficient, bobbing all around the window and searching in all directions. 'Okay. Only one det. No incoming noise. Not artillery. Either a bad accident or sabotage.'

Directing a scathing look at Hawkwood, the little man stood up, tipped his hat and strolled to the doorway.

'I'm off to see Rickenhaus. While I'm gone, can you please ensure the farmers don't destroy the _entire_ landing zone?'

The skirt looked down her nose at the colonel.

' "Not Fit For Purpose",' she intoned, scribbling on her electronic pad and stalking away.

'That was my last can,' complained Ace. 'I hope it was worth it.'

The Doctor's ability to use his braces as a slingshot with a delayed-action fuse on the Nitro Nine had surprised Ace. Not Dean; he was beginning to run out of surprise. He released a long, long exhalation,

feeling sweat cool across his back in relief at getting into that tin shed and out again with skin intact.

'Look around,' called the Doctor, striding boldly onwards. 'Look around.'

When Ace did so, she understood her sacrifice had been worth it. The mercenaries of Camp Basinette were running in all directions, boarding helicopters, sending out search patrols, shouting and gesticulating angrily. They displayed all the activity of an overturned ant-heap.

'You managed that amazingly well,' gushed Dean. 'I didn't think we'd get a single word in.'

The Doctor turned his head slightly, smiling a smile that radiated mischief.

'Just wait until we get to see the Comptroller. What was his name again? Oh, yes, Rickenhaus. I'll twist his tail.'

'You didn't know his name? But you talked about him!'

A tap of the nose was Dean's only answer.

'That soldier used it first,' explained Ace. 'The Doctor only picked up on it then.'

'Quiet now,' ordered the Time Lord, aware that they were now approaching one of the massive IMC ships. It would undoubtedly have external surveillance, maybe even sound coverage. 'I'm going to go snooping around the interior of this ship, so I want you two to try and bully your way to see Rickenhaus. Try to inspire a little honest fear into him, and also divert his attention from my noseying.'

A liveried member of the Security Force looked as if he might stop the trio from entering the craft, until the Doctor walked at him with umbrella levelled, threatening to skewer the unfortunate minion.

The interior lowest level consisted of metal-panelled corridors, pressed-steel flooring, harsh neon lighting and key-coded doors. A large lift at the end of the corridor displayed various legends on the control panel, featuring "Geology" and "Mezzanine". The Time Lord chose the former, his assistants the latter.

'Bully them?' asked Dean, sounding unsure. 'Like, threaten them with violence?'

This idea died stillborn when they exited the lift. A pair of Security Force were standing behind the reception desk with their weapons unslung, flanking a nervous woman – a result of the unexplained explosion outside.

'Yes?' asked the woman, sounding worried and anxious. The two thuggish-looking guards looked admiringly at Ace's legs, and with considerably less enthusiasm at Dean, noting the bulge under his left armpit.

'Here with Mister Smith. To see Mister Rickenhaus,' snapped Ace.

'Mister – who? Is that you?' asked the receptionist, sounding confused and looking at Dean.

'No. I'm his escort,' deadpanned the youth, opening his striped suit to reveal the pistol.

'Mister Smith is here to carry out an internal audit,' said Ace, coolly. 'Targetted performance achievement, projected profit ratings, cost-benefit analysis.'

It sounded impressively business-like to her. Hopefully it sounded convincing to the stressed-out dolly-bird behind the counter!

'Well, where is he then?'

'Having a look behind the scenes already, I believe,' replied Ace, and felt gratified when the receptionist blanched at the statement: there must be skeletons in closets here for such a reaction!

Luck still held true for the Doctor, as only a single person had been on duty in the Geology bay, and that person being one of the senior staff: Arturo Mickelsohn.

Having prised off a series of panels from the computer suite that occupied an entire wall of the big science lab, the Doctor set to with a will, and his needle. Firstly, he identified the storage chips that kept data and began tapping away with the needle's point, then stroking various parts of the thin-film circuitry to create an induced micro-magnetic field that would erase electronic information. Five minutes was all he could spare for this before risking a search party being sent to track him down. Besides, Arturo could continue with the rest of the re-setting, deleting and alterations.

Arturo sat at his console, grinning blankly and staring into space, as he had been ever since he had unwisely faced the Doctor when the Time Lord entered the science bay.

'Arturo. Pay attention,' intoned the Doctor, putting panels back with the aid of his trusty sonic screwdriver.

'Pay attention,' droned Arturo.

'You will alter data as I instructed you. After that you will forget you ever altered it. You will not remember ever meeting me. You are not to inform anyone about the nature of your geological assay unless ordered.'

'Alter data. Forget. Not remember meeting. Inform only if ordered,' droned Arturo obediently.

The Doctor tutted in embarrassment at having to assault another being's mind. He didn't enjoy twisting anyone's psyche via hypnosis, even when events called for it. Needs must when the devil drives, he consoled himself, departing silently for the lift and the Mezzanine. Either it was this or lots of carnage.

Arturo snapped to, having caught himself daydreaming. He began to expedite a data-knitting programme that would eat it's way into and across the stored geology information that IMC had acquired since landing; he had set it for a post-hoc adaptation – something only used on models and trials, never ever on the raw data that sat in the secure database.

Having completed that, he promptly forgot ever having done it, and went back to reading an article in IMC's in-house journal, "Clementine", about asteroidal mining.

Up on the Mezzanine, the Doctor noticed the transition from bare and functional spaceship to well-appointed executive's office space. Shag pile carpets, art prints on the walls, even a few well-tended ferns in planters.

The pair of security guards were less welcoming. They already looked on Ace and Dean with misgivings.

'Pleased to meet you!' he smarmed to the receptionist, bowing slightly and taking his hat off. 'Mister Smith. Here to – let us say, to _inform_ Mister Rickenhaus.' With that, he seated himself on the front of the desk.

'I don't know who you are, but you don't have an appointment, Mister Rickenhaus is busy and we're expecting to go active in thirty minutes. You are not getting in!' announced the receptionist sternly.

Sorrowfully, the Doctor shook his head.

'Thirty minutes, eh? Tell me, are you Mister Rickenhaus's personal assistant?' The woman frowned, gracing the question with a single abrupt nod. 'Do you think he'll be able to afford you when he's fired? Fired in - ' and he pulled out a half-hunter to check time ' - say, two hours from now?'

'Fired?' repeated the woman.

'An internal audit, just as I warned you,' butted in Ace, looking over her glasses.

'Let's go,' declared the Doctor airily, jumping down from the table. He glanced back at the receptionist, then at Ace. 'Did you get that transcribed?'

' "I don't know who you are, but you are not getting in",' quoted Ace with relish. She pressed a button on the notepad and an electronic voice repeated the text, with extra emphasis on the "not". The hapless receptionist gasped at the effrontery of her unwanted visitors.

'I'll be sure to forward a copy to your boss,' said the Doctor, all bonhomie vanished from his voice. 'If there's one thing I detest it's little tinpot dictators!'

Hetty, the receptionist, quailed at this threat. She wavered for a second before remembering her two daughters and their university fund.

'Mister Rickenhaus? I have a non-scheduled person to see you. Mister Smith – oww!' and she yelped as the little man whirled back round to face the Comptroller's suite, his umbrella point catching her finger on the intercom button, knocking both finger and button off.

The Senior Comptroller in person was less than impressive: Ace thought he resembled a wrestler gone to seed, his bulk barely concealed by a very expensive suit. He had thin ginger hair and granny glasses on a chain round his neck.

'Aha. Rickenhaus. We meet at last. I'll need to see you without witnesses. Miss Gale, please stay here. You too, Dean.'

He bustled past a startled Rickenhaus, who looked at Hetty, then at the two assistants his unexpected visitor had brought, and then retreated into his plush private quarters.

Not standing on ceremony, the Doctor threw himself full length onto the comfortable leather sofa.

'Who the hell are you!' snapped the angry Comptroller.

'Call me Smith. And be careful what you say, the mercenaries have doubtless bugged this room already.'

If matters had been less serious, the Doctor would have enjoyed the play of expressions across the Comptroller's face – and across Colonel Hawkwood's, too.

'And what's this nonsense about an internal audit?' sneered the Comptroller. 'I have total autonomy here!'

The Doctor looked up with a mocking expression.

'Yes, quite. Of course I'm not really here about an internal audit; that was merely a pretext. The issue is your autonomy, actually, and preventing you from making a gigantic pigs-ear of the mining here on the Fall.'

Rickenhaus consulted his antique grandfather clock.

'Oh, I doubt that. We're despatching the autonomic mining plants in twenty five minutes.'

'Fair enough,' replied the Doctor, leaning back and tipping his hat forward to cover his face. He put his hands behind his neck and appeared to any onlooker to be about to fall asleep. The Comptroller managed to tolerate this for a few minutes before losing patience and shaking his unwelcome visitor by the shoulder.

'Look, what is all this about? What are you here for, really?'

'Can't a chap catch forty winks!' grumbled the Doctor. 'If you want to get sacked despite my offer of help, that's your business.' He turned over, only for Rickenhaus to shake him again.

'Get up! Get up and explain yourself!' barked the Comptroller, losing his temper.

Muttering darkly, the Doctor sat himself upright.

'You haven't bothered to get any information about your geology assay, have you?'

'What? Of course not! Why should I!'

The Doctor's eyes narrowed.

'I am here because you still have allies back at HQ in Shanghai. It was they who despatched me out here to prevent you from squandering several trillion nemmies and destroying your career.'

This hit home, hard. The Doctor knew how big beaurocracies operated, not to mention the politicking, backstabbing and manoeuvring for position in a company as driven by profit as IMC. To have reached a position like Senior Comptroller, Rickenhaus would have trodden many people into the mire, acquired a good many enemies and retained a clique of provisional allies – not "friends", never friends, acquaintances at best. The trick was to bait the hook, dangle it in front of the fish and have it bite whilst still allowing the victim to believe the biting idea was it's own. A process that normally took time.

And the minutes were ticking away.

Rickenhaus frowned sternly, looked into the distance and put a call through to Geology.

'What are you hinting about? Are you saying these colonists can fight back effectively?'

A shrug from the Doctor.

'Quite possibly. Again, Shanghai tell me that they have a self-sending trans-mat platform, which is how they managed to sabotage the Hawks radio shed. I take it you didn't know? No. Once again, kept in the dark.'

At this unwelcome news of the subsistence-level colonists having state-of-the-art technology, Rickenhaus felt his stomach churn. The reply from Geology came in, broadcast from hidden speakers.

'Yes, sir?' quavered the voice.

'Is that Mickelsohn? What's this I've been hearing about the assay?' His eyes flicked across to the Doctor. 'What's gone wrong?'

A second of hiss came over the speakers.

'Ah. Yes. Well. I was specifically ordered _not_ to tell you, sir. You see - '

The Comptroller jerked as if struck. The Doctor crossed his fingers. "Ordered", yes, except ordered by a person who had nothing to do with IMC.

'Ordered! Damn your sclerotic eyes, man, tell me what's gone wrong!'

A cough came from Mickelsohn.

'Well, sir, from the data coming in from the test boreholes, it seems that about two hundred and fifty million years ago the Fall suffered collision with a very large impactor, approaching Roche's Limit. The planet stayed intact, if only just. There was vulcanism over the whole surface for at least fifty thousand years, followed by crustal inversion for another fifty thousand years.'

It had been decades since Rickenhaus had needed to follow the technical jargon of geology.

'Explain that simply, Mickelsohn.'

'Okay. Broadly speaking, sir, this planet's crust is far, far thicker than normal. Of the order of around two to three hundred kilometres, with a scarcity of any minerals, power metals or ores in any of that layer.'

'WHAT!' shouted Rickenhaus. Three hundred kilometres of mantle without any economic returns! It would take months just to get through the mantle before they began to mine anything, months of enormous expenditure without any return. From being profit-neutral as they were at present, they'd be running a deficit of billions within days.

He jumped to his walnut desk and hit the communications button.

'Hetty! Abort the autonomic factory launch!'

Her reply was clearly puzzled.

'I don't know if - '

'JUST GET IT CANCELLED!' he bellowed, turning back to glare at the Doctor. 'And get Mickelsohn to mail me the data about the Fall's geology. Within thirty seconds!'

Twenty seconds later he printed off a long scroll of metallic paper, that featured the raw and interpreted data from Geology – all of which confirmed both Mickelsohn and "Mister Smith's" prognostications. End result of digging would be a deficit of several hundred billion at best.

'Okay, so you were right. Who's behind this?'

The Doctor tapped the side of his nose, producing a small plastic card from an inner pocket.

'The same clique who tried to keep this information from you. I dare say they were trying two birds, one stone tactics: send you down in flames, put their protégé on the gravy train. Here.'

He flipped the card at the other man.

'So Mickelsohn was working for them? Damn! I bet it's that collection of backstabbers from Mongolia. They hold a grudge, that lot.'

'And the Siberians,' added the Doctor, trying a shot in the dark.

'You think so? Yeah, that's like them, making a short-term alliance.' He examined the data chip. 'What's on here? The real compiled data on the Fall?'

Standing up and yawning hugely, the Doctor shook his head.

'Far more important! That is information on the Herapolis system. Acquired from the UN's Deep Space Mapping Mission. A system with three asteroid rings, several rocky worlds for mining bases, no native life bigger than an amoeba and unclaimed to date.'

Basic tactics. Distract your opponent, then divert them with another issue altogether.

The Comptroller looked at the Doctor very carefully. Asteroid systems were easy to mine, but those of the Sol system were jealously guarded by Ceres Inc, who could – and did – call on the UN's PPF to destroy any commercial interloper. Three rings of asteroids promised the delivery of unimaginable wealth to their developer.

'What's the catch?'

The Doctor tried a sincere smile.

'No catch. Just remember your friends when the royalties come rolling in. Remember the most honourable Mister Smith.'

There was a catch, of course. The Herapolis system lay over ninety light years distant. Far enough to make any return to Hargreaves Fall unrealistic, yet not far enough to be discouraging.

'I'll make sure to leave Mickelsohn stranded here. I'll have him nailed to a tree!' grated Rickenhaus.

'Your decision,' said the Doctor in a dismissive tone. 'Or you could use him to channel false information back to the Siberians.'

'What a sneaky customer you are!' sneered the Comptroller. 'Let me get you a malt.'

He toasted the Doctor, visions of trillions of nemmies coursing through his mind. A three-ring asteroid system!

'Hetty? Is the factory launch properly aborted? Oh, good. Have the word put around that we are going to be leaving soonest. Get the Astrogation team up here, straight away. Recall all the Security Force and anyone else off-ship at present.'

'Yes, sir!' replied the receptionist, baffled at the abrupt change in plans yet catching up with her boss's mercurial moods today.

'Better watch out for trouble from The Hawks,' warned the Doctor. 'Now, this is a nice malt.'

Rickenhaus cocked his head and speculated.

'They didn't want the colonists to leave, you know. I've only just realised why, when IMC wanted them out of the way.'

'Slaves.'

'Exactly! Here, let me see you out.'

The escort from the room was un-necessary. However, it did allow Rickenhaus to speak without fear of the bug hinted at earlier.

'I'm going to put a call in to the UN's Paramilitary Police Force. Tell them that we're leaving the Fall because it's infested with mercenaries who arrived here after us. That'll earn us brownie points with the UN, us holding our hands up in horror.'

This utter cynicism nearly caused the Doctor to choke, despite his acting skills.

'How – splendid. That's thinking on your feet,' he managed to mumble.

'Hetty – pass this info on to the Astro team when they turn up.'

The receptionist's attention had wandered to a display showing an external view of the valley outside. A dismal lump settled in the Doctor's stomach when he recognised the old, familiar blue boxlike shape of the TARDIS.

She's reverted back to type! he realised. No contact with her crew for an age, nothing to over-ride the Chameleon circuit's settling back into the well-worn shape.

'Looks like your mercenary friends are resorting to a little levity,' he tried.

'It looks like a latrine,' commented one of the Security Force personnel, making the Doctor wince internally.

'I don't have time to investigate their whimsy. Need to get back for our challenge to Hermes Metals Trust in Geneva.'

'We'll need to hurry to make the deadline, sir,' added Ace without prompting. She felt nervous that everything had gone too well. There had to be a hitch along the line at some point!

'HMT are still going?' asked Rickenhaus in surprise. 'Didn't they get acquired by Ceres?'

Whoops! realised the Doctor. Stop trying to be too clever!

'No. We did put it about that they had been, unofficially, so we could have a clear run at them. Unfortunately the Israelis and Japanese also discovered our tactic. So we now have to compete for HMT.'

There might have been other questions if Ace hadn't forestalled them by holding up the electronic notepad in front of the Comptroller.

'Can you sign and date this, please, Mister Rickenhaus? We need a time-stamp as proof of service provided.'

'Oh, go on then,' grumbled the man, signing with a flourish. 'Don't think this obliges me to pay you anything.'

The Doctor tipped his hat politely.

'Nothing so crude as money! Just remember your friends!'

Turning abruptly on his heel, he held his umbrella at high port and marched out of the Mezzanine. Ace came after, trying her best to look snooty and unconcerned, followed by Dean.

'Notepad!' snapped the Doctor once they were outside the doors to the lift.

_Stay in character and don't chatter_ he wrote, showing it discreetly to his assistants.

'Typical lift. Takes forever,' complained Dean. 'If we had to get out of here in an emergency …'

'Oh, don't complain, you old woman!' scolded Ace. 'We just saved IMC trillions. Think of that instead. Much more positive.'

'Quite correct, Miss Gale. Even more than that, we ensure our voting bloc now has the support of Rickenhaus. Ah, finally – select "Ground", will you? Yes. Mister Rickenhaus is going to become a force to be reckoned with when he sets to in the Herapolis System. Independently wealthy and a favourite of IMC to boot.'

Ace glanced around the bland interior of the lift. All it lacked was piped muzak.

'What about the Siberians?' she asked, out of minor deviltry. See what the Doctor could improvise out of that!

'What about them? They're still on Earth. They haven't even got a mining mission together. Our people here are one hundred and twenty light years closer to Herapolis and can be off-world in a few hours.' He snapped his fingers. 'That! for the Siberians!'

In the chaos of an unexpectedly early departure by IMC, and the angry abandonment of Hargreaves Fall by The Hawks, nobody thought to wonder about exactly where or when Mister Smith and his followers departed, nor where the stylish personal starship had gotten to, nor where a peculiar blue artefact that appeared had vanished to with equal suddenness.

Dean could have told them. He stood at the edge of the jungle, wits wobbled once again by the alteration in appearance of the TARDIS, and waved goodbye to the travellers.

What a tale! he exulted. And what a master of manipulation and intrigue the little man had been. Thanks be to above that he liked the colonists.

His walk back to the HQ ship took long enough that he witnessed the purple ionisation trails looping upwards from the southern hemisphere that told of starships taking flight.

Evan was excitedly shouting into a throat microphone outside the hull, now comfortably esconced in a transparent plastic shack and surrounded by communications consoles.

'Dean! I got through! The jamming's gone!'

Dean leaned in the doorway.

'So has IMC!' he grinned. 'It's our world now!'


	7. Chapter 7

PART TWO: " – DO THINGS DIFFERENTLY - "

PART TWO: " – DO THINGS DIFFERENTLY - "

CHAPTER SEVEN

A pale and sickly dawn brought little comfort to the two dozen travellers sitting around their portable space heaters, mostly looking inwardly with the introspection that the small hours bring in their wake.

The twenty-fifth member of the group, Lizabet, stood beyond earshot of her companions and looked at the landscape ahead, aided by a set of IR binoculars. A bio-war stick, currently inert, lay taped along one side of the electronic goggles, and a chem-counter dangled on a metal chain from them.

Yes, she mused, seeing nothing but thinned-out jungle ahead. We're entering the really dangerous lands now, constant checking for ABC traces. Her stomach twitched – down to twenty-five from their original forty-two and yet to brave the killing zones less than a day's march away.

Bright green fireflies swarmed up and outwards from a point in the jungle far to the north. Lizabet dropped the goggles and tried to resolve the objects with plain eyesight alone, failing completely. Still too dark. She looked at her wrist compass and took a bearing.

The others had warmed a muffin for her; no butter, and only a scraping of e-jam, washed down with weak coffee loaded with e-milk. She ate gratefully, aware of a gnawing hunger.

'What prospects?' asked Krisa, her cousin. All eyes turned to Lizabet.

'It looks reasonable. No signs of human activity, nothing active on the chemical or biological sensors, no radioactivity above the background count. Oh – I did see birds flying out of the jungle, got a bearing on that and we'll head for there.'

'How bad is the jungle?' asked one of the teenagers.

Lizabet nodded. Sensible question.

'Fairly easy to move in. It seems to have been killed off by physical force, bombs or napalm at a guess. No freaks or sports.'

Her guess was correct, and they gathered various fruits and berries whilst moving under the occasional canopy. Wise thanks to experience, they refrained from eating too much of the fruit at once – on stomachs unused to it, that would be risking cramps or diorrhea.

Gradually, both suns rose to burn off any remaining ground-mist. Equally slowly, their route became a passage along a valley floor that headed due north in an arrow-straight line. Running water could be heard off to their east. Of more concern, at several points they moved easily over a decayed path that still showed traces of being used. Not merely by wild animals, either; scattered rings of blackened stones showed where previous travellers had set fires alongside the path.

Misha, one of the surviving teenagers, rolled his eyes towards the second such of these old campfires when they passed by.

'Should we worry about those, Lizabet?' he asked.

'No,' she replied, shortly. The doe-eyed boy looked hurt. 'Look closely. No trace of ashes or fuel remaining. Whoever made those fires is long gone, and the elements have only left the stones.'

Their pathfinder held up a hand and the whole group came to a sudden stop, silently, as practice had taught them. The pathfinder fiddled at his belt, then began to twirl his wrist. A hissing thrum came to Lizabet's ear, coming to an abrupt stop as the pathfinder snapped his wrist forward. With a shriek cut short, one of the native mackaw's fell dead from a branch, hitting the ground in a flurry of dislodged feathers.

'Good shot!' congratulated one of the group. Artur, the pathfinder, tucked his slingshot away with deserved pride and strode forward to collect his kill.

At least half a dozen of the group would be able to eat meat tonight, realised Lizabet. She caught up with Artur.

'Well done.' Sparing any of their scarce ammunition and for being such a good shot with the sling.

He shrugged and began to pick up the pace again.

'Easier than I imagined. No, I meant the travel on this stretch. This must have been a roadway before the Breakdown.'

'And that river or stream away on our right. Notice how it hasn't changed course at all?'

He harumphed in agreement. Rivers didn't normally run straight, and not for kilometre after kilometre.

'Just be wary,' warned Lizabet. 'Path and canal imply civilisation. We could be moving towards a meeting.'

Artur's posture suggested that he was well aware of this – at which point, as in a bad drama, they came across the overgrown, rusting hulks of armoured vehicles. Three of them, big tracked machines that now sported an overlay of earth and weeds and trailing vines. Their interiors were gutted into barren uselessness, with enough penetrating holes to render them equally useless as shelter.

Chiding the teenagers, who never seemed to lose a fascination with derelict artefacts, the group hurried on. Once both suns reached apex, they halted for a quick lunch. Artur used his dead bird as a decoy and managed to kill a second victim.

'Your attention, please,' began Lizabet after bolting her crackers and gruel. The group rolled it's collective eyes – Lizabet lecturing again! 'Yes, yes, I know. Well it bears repeating. We are about to begin entering the lands that belonged to the polities closest to Cormelle, the ones that were most advanced before Breakdown. "Most advanced" to us means "used the most deadly weapons", so we must be careful, very careful indeed, from now on.'

Sighs and mutterings from the group.

'You said they wiped themselves out,' complained Dora. This was exactly the wrong thing to say to Lizabet, who promptly countered with venom.

'I did nothing of the sort! _That_ was Istvan.'

Dora tactfully kept silent about their now-dead leader. Ex-leader.

'These polities may have wiped themselves out, which doesn't mean they didn't leave boobytraps or long-lived weapons-systems behind.'

Left unsaid was the cause of Istvan's death – he and four others: mines. Simple, low-tech, pressure-activated mines not shown on any of their maps and still deadly years after having been sown by the long-gone troops of a forgotten encounter.

And if the low-tech lunatics of the Beuaclaire polity could kill five of them with primitive weapons like that, what of the high-end polities close to the original landing city of Cormelle?

This sanctuary we seek must be worth our sacrifice. It _must_ be! hoped Lizabet with a fervour that they call carried close to their hearts.

Zeta Reticuli IV, less formally known to local inhabitants of that particular star system as "Netrosphere", lay at the centre of a complex hub of interstellar pathways. At forty-five light years distance from Earth, it wasn't quite the definition of a rebel colony;yet nor was it quite obedient to every edict or instruction from the motherworld.

What the planet did possess was a thriving mercantile culture. It was said that you could buy your heart's desire on Netrosphere, whether that was healthy or not. Half a dozen alien races held permanent markets on each major continent, and another dozen came for temporary markets in different seasons.

All in all, Zeta Reticuli IV could be described as cosmopolitan. Which is what had brought the Doctor and companion there.

'This place is mad!' muttered that very same companion, using her elbows freely to barge against the flow of shoppers that threatened to carry her backwards. Most of the crowd were human, dressed in everything from loincloths to vast swathes of multi-coloured silks. They carried phones, they had surgically implanted communications, they shouted and hallooed to one another, and they all, without exception, carried bags that knocked into everyone else.

Finally, she ducked onto the walkway that led to a row of different eateries and out of the main crowd. Which one was the Doctor in? "Celestial Palace"? "Angkor Wat"? "Hank's Hamburgery Surgery"?

The familiar tousled mop of hair atop a frenetic face popped out of "Caernarvon Caff"'s doorway.

'Martha! What kept you!'

She thumbed at the mob behind her.

'That lot! Honestly, it's worse than the New Year sales.'

'Have you got them?'

She waved the packet, only for it to be snatched from her grasp, her shoulder to be grabbed and then herself dragged into the café bodily.

Amazingly, it resembled nothing more than a clean version of a motorway greasy spoon, down to bottles of tomato ketchup and brown sauce sitting on plastic chequered tablecloths. Martha picked up the ketchup bottle and read the label: yup, plain old tomato ketchup.

Opposite her, the Doctor sat and scoffed his Rich Tea biscuits with his mug of over-sweet, milky tea. When half the packet had vanished he seemed to take stock and remember his companion.

'Would you like one?'

'No! No, thank you. I'm still attempting to regain my dignity after that giant rugby scrum outside.'

'Oo foud hff tn th fwow,' mumbled the Doctor as he attacked the biscuits again.

'Come again?' asked Martha.

'He said "You should have taken the flow",' interrupted and interpreted a Welsh voice coming from a nearby table. Martha turned to see a dapper, crop-headed man with quick, intelligent eyes, wearing a uniform with lots of silver braid. 'If you follow the crowd they go in a circle and you'll end up where you started. Netrosphere's First Law of Shopping.'

'Thanks. I'll remember that next time my friend wants his biscuits.'

The Doctor looked pained.

'Martha! Rich Tea are the epitome of biscuitiness across the galaxy! How can you begrudge a poor, forlorn traveller one of his little luxuries?'

Martha dismissed this playing to the gallery with a snort of amused contempt, before picking up a menu and looking at the bill of fare.

Yes, again, just the sort of food you could get at Camden market on a Sunday morning. The prices were unfamiliar.

'What are these "NEMU's"?' she asked, half at the Doctor, half at the Welshman nearby.

' "Notional Economic Monetary Units". Kind of interstellar guineas. Good anywhere you go,' said the Welshman.

'And at current exchange rates, a single Nemmie would be the equivalent of thirty five pounds,' added her mentor.

Martha looked at the price list again, this time in alarm.

'Fifteen Nemu's for a bacon barm – over five hundred quid for a sandwich!' she squeaked.

The Welshman looked pityingly at the Doctor, who mock-sighed.

'Yes, Martha. It is all imported from Earth, you know.'

She looked around. They were the only patrons, and no wonder at prices like those! She fixed the single person serving with a fiery look.

'Chiseler!' she muttered.

This only amused the Welshman even more.

'He's only a front man. The real owner is an alien. Alpha Centauran.'

Martha glanced at the Doctor for an explanation.

'Hermaphroditic hexapods, two metres tall. With a single giant eye as big as your fist!'

With a slight start, Martha realised she'd already seen a couple of creatures similar to that description. They'd been caught up in the ravening crowd too, and had been twittering and bleating with alarm.

'I can tell you've been around, sir. The lass rather less so. First time off-world?'

As if! Before Martha could voice her not yet compendious experience of space travel, the Doctor jumped in.

'Oh, she's been to one or two places. I'm the Doctor, by the way – intrepid traveller and explorer. This is Martha. Martha Jones. Medical student.'

'Nearly-fully-qualified-medical-student,' added Martha, not to be outdone.

'Ah! Noble calling, that. Oh, I'm Hugh Dowd. Spaceship captain. You here to apply to the Red Star?'

'I'm not sure yet,' bluffed the young woman. 'Perhaps take a look-see first, you know?'

The spaceship captain shook his head.

'They need all the help they can get. Dealing with The Fall keeps them at full stretch.'

Little of this sentence or it's predecessor made sense to Martha, but the Doctor's gaze snapped up and onto the Welshman with a sudden intensity.

'The Fall? Hargreave's Fall?'

'Why yes. It's not big news back on Earth, but out here it's a small and persistent tragedy.'

The Doctor's behaviour suddenly collapsed into a silent reverie, where he sat and stared at his empty mug, chewing the inside of his cheek. With equal suddenness he came back to animated action again.

'Have you been doing contract work for the Red Star?'

Captain Dowd nodded sombrely.

'Not the best paying. Steady, though.' He cleared his throat and admitted what a hard-bitten space-traveller out to make a profit ought not to: 'And in a good cause.'

Martha put two and two together. They were in the year two thousand nine hundred and sixty seven, and a long way from Earth. This was her far distant future. The Red Cross and Red Crescent would have been superceded by a non-denominational equivalent, especially one dealing with interstellar matters: the Red Star. Even if it sounded like a brand of Russian vodka, it must be a medical and care organisation, or the Welshman wouldn't have asked if she wanted to join it.

The Doctor tried to recall the events of five hundred years past and three regenerations ago, not coming up with much. Ace, Roger Cormelle and IMC were all that came to mind immediately. His nine hundred year diary would have the relevant mnemonic triggers, except he'd left it in the TARDIS.

The biggest worry he had was of leaving an inheritance that led to a tragedy. Not the first time it had happened – that demented supercomputer Xoanon constituted his most embarrassing _faux pas_ to date.

'Are you a regular here, Captain?' he asked. The trim officer shrugged.

'For the next few rotations. My crew are off enjoying themselves for another forty-eight hours.'

'Then I'll see you around,' finished the Time Lord, jumping up and scraping his hair back manfully. Martha recognised this as non-verbal language meaning "down to business". Sure enough, he strode off, gesturing for her to follow him.

'What's wrong?' she asked. 'The moment he mentioned tragedy, you turned all dark and brooding. Very Shakespearean.'

Their shoes rattled frantically along the walkway, Martha trying to keep up valiantly.

'We're off to the TARDIS. This time, keep your arm in mine. Okay, one – two – venture forth!'

Being carried counter-clockwise made for a far easier journey. So much easier, in fact, that Martha felt able to look at her fellow shoppers in the headlong scramble, an observation that resulted in an unpleasant shock.

'Doctor! Did you those Ju- '

'Yes!' he replied. 'Save your breath, we nip sideyways here. Mind your feet, madame!'

Abruptly, they left the mass of travelling people and entered into a far quieter alleyway where heavy awnings kept the slanting sunlight away. With a few twists and turns, they emerged into a vast, flat, glaringly white expanse of mirrored glass hardstand. Gigantic and elaborate graphics were etched into the landing field to guide in descending aircraft or spaceships, which stood in isolated rows for literally kilometres into the distance. The TARDIS, tiny, blue and overshadowed by a Dravidian light cruiser and a Protean cargo-hauler was at least five minutes walk away. First they needed to check that no other craft were coming in to land or depart. Eventually a mobile control shed skirted the edge of the landing apron and held off any arrivals or departures long enough for them to get to the timeship.

The Doctor's reticence for so long was unusual. Martha realised he felt troubled, and troubled enough to avoid burdening her with the details. So, she couldn't help with whatever ailed him. She could, as a sop, help in his decision-making process. Tea, once again!

Whilst leading his companion on a rapid return to the TARDIS, the Doctor had been thinking deep and sombre thoughts.

He didn't want to get a personalised or partisan account of what Hargreave's Fall had undergone. No, he'd need to get solid background from a neutral source, then colour it with selected subjective accounts.

His first-derivation analysis didn't bode well. "They need all the help they can get. Dealing with The Fall keeps them at full stretch" implied that the local Red Star resources were barely able to cope with an indeterminate emergency, and that interplanetary _medicin sans frontieres_ would surely have committed plenty to such a crucial population and commerce hub as the Netrosphere and environs? "Persistent tragedy" also implied a lengthy process of Whatever. A small tragedy repeated on a regular basis.

There were a few bright spots. This critical situation must be recent in origin; if it had arisen whilst the Time Lords were still around, then they'd have been breathing down his neck to get in there and right whatever wrongs had been inflicted by his interference. If, alternatively, the suffering had been going on for centuries, then he was also in the clear: those interfering bumptious Gallifreyan oafs would have once again been tapping him on the shoulder and harrumphing in disapproval.

Never considered I'd miss that lot, he mused as they waited to cross the hardstand. _Genuinely_ miss them.

Putting one foot in front of the other without any conscious involvement, he continued to review his own behaviour. The Fall had been an unspoilt tropical and sub-tropical paradise, a potential battlefield between Cormelle and IMC. By utilising wit, wisdom and a winning smile, he'd managed to turn IMC against itself and trigger a miniature civil war. Or had that been the Dragoman culture on Herwald?

Once inside the TARDIS he tracked down the impressively battered nine hundred year diary and flicked backwards until he found the relevant pages.

A strangely familiar smell assailed his nostrils as he riffled pages back and forth.

'Here you go,' offered Martha, holding out a tray that balanced a cup of tea and – excellent! – Rich Tea's from the larder.

'Ta!' he said, drinking and reading rapidly.

Five minutes of contemplation later, he dragged a Louis IV chair from a locker and sat backwards on it, chewing the inside of his mouth.

'Thanks for the tea and not asking questions,' he informed Martha. 'Here, look for yourself.'

Martha hefted the brick-thick leather-bound diary, which conveniently fell open at a page annotated with blocks and lines and panels and loops of a strange, scratchy pictogram.

'Sorry, don't read Pitman.'

The Doctor tutted, took the volume back and closed the pages, kicked the time rotor, shouted "Oi!" very loudly and passed the diary back to Martha.

Inexplicably, this time the script was in English.

'Sorry. That was Scribonesque – a form of Gallifreyan shorthand. Go on, have a quick check, I'd like your opinion on my observations and actions.'

In potted form, with abbreviations that took an effort to decipher, Martha read about the Seventh Doctor's excursion to Hargreave's Fall and how he'd defeated the mighty IMC without an all-out battle.

'Who's this "Ace" woman?' she asked, regretting asking the second the question was out. 'Er – and you seem to have had no problems about sorting IMC out. Veni, Vedi, Vici.'

She got a lop-sided grin in reply.

'Flatterer! It was closer than it looks. Twenty minutes longer would have seen us fail completely. Ace? Ace was an explosive personality, you might say. Anyway, do you think I might have inflicted any unfortunate end results on the colonists?'

Martha went back over the notes, not entirely clear what she was looking for. That other, older version of the Doctor – and how strange it was to think of such a thing! – had outsmarted the mining multinational, using his knowledge of how a bureaucracy operated, their politics-by-career-assassination, their inherent greed and paranoia, instead of any militaristic counter-punching. Intellect, not technology.

'Mmmm, nope. "Minimal intervention" is how our lecturer would describe it.' She cast a sideways look at him, still sitting on the chair. 'It must be important for you to get so worried.'

'Mmhmm. I still haven't told you a great deal about Time Lord culture, have I?'

Retelling his original rejection of Gallifreyan culture's morals brought a small lump to the Doctor's throat. To begin with, he had played the part of a rootless cosmic drifter astray in time and space, meddling with history as he saw fit, to the apoplectic anger of the Time Council. When they caught up with him, he'd been severely punished, fixed firmly in time and space in a single location. Later, after serving a probationary period on Planet Earth, he began to be allowed considerable latitude, because that way the Time Lords could use him as a proxy whilst still maintaining their traditional hands-off attitude, and convenient deniability.

That the policy of _debridement_ had a rational basis became apparent to the Doctor when he confronted the aftermath of his "helping" the Mordee Expedition. In the long-term his intervention had created a mutually-divided society of the Tesh and the Sevateem, locked in a perpetual struggle with themselves, instigated by the insane supercomputer Xoanon. Then too, there were horror stories from the Academy about wilful interference the embryonic Time Lords had carried out in millennia long gone, resulting in apocalypses beyond redemption.

So, yes, important.

When Sergeant Landesman heard the covert alarm buzz in his helmet phones, he worried at first that those loonies from the next polity over had come a-raiding again. Just a month ago they had come shrieking down the valley bottom at a rush, yelling like – just like madmen, really, hundreds of them. The pre-positioned anti-personnel mines and wire-throwers had chopped down scores of them, until the onrush overwhelmed and exhausted the merc's defences and they fell into close-range and then point-blank and then hand-to-hand combat.

Hairy. Definitely hairy. Landesman survived thanks to a combination of luck, firepower and fleetness of foot. Most of the mercs had survived, also, with only a dozen casualties. All dead, of course: the loonies didn't take prisoners or suffer wounded to survive.

Now: now, their mines were all gone and the wire-throwers were all empty. If a rampaging mob of demented attackers rolled over the outpost today, they'd have little between themselves and the inner settlements of the Bayer 50 polity. Instead of active defences, they had passive ones out, sensors and alarms that would warn of an approach but not stop it.

The sergeant nervously checked his sidearm, checked his goggles and checked his helmet phones. Ducking out of the shelter, he jogged over to the comm table. Hogan sat hunched over the table and stared stupidly at the displays on the monitors, but fortunately his companion on duty was Bogomil, who had activated the geo-phones.

'Oh. Sarge. We got game. About twenty or so, moving in a column along the valley floor.'

'Loonies?' asked the sergeant, ignoring Hogan's frown of annoyance.

'Doubtful. Moving slowly and carefully, and out in the open if they can help it. They do have scouts out on either flank, and a man on point.'

Sighing, almost on the borders of wistfulness, Landesman straightened up and shook his head.

'Aha. Pilgrims, then. Warn the ready team, we're off in one hundred seconds.'

By the time Landesman and his eight men reached a convenient point to intercept their uninvited guests, Sun One, Alpha, had fallen and the light was getting poor, most especially since they were at the bottom of the valley. Every second man amongst the mercs had image-intensifying goggles that came into play gradually, limning the thin forest in a ghostly replication of daylight.

Then, suddenly, the traveller's point man was in the clearing, walking slowly and warily. Vaguely mobile shadows further off were the flankers that the pilgrims had sent out.

Landesman allowed the scout to get half way across the big clearing, also allowing a dozen worn-looking civvies to come after him.

'Halt! Identify yourself!' shouted Landesman from safety behind a tree, squinting into the sights of his superscope. Any funny moves from the scout and the whole lot would get burnt down –

Creditably, the civvies didn't panic. They stopped, drawing together, until a slender woman with cropped hair and quick eyes stepped forward.

'We only seek passage to Cormelle. We're not here to loot or scavenge or attack anyone,' she declared to the jungle before her, turning to make this announcement to a whole semi-circle. 'And we can pay,' she added, forcefully.

Naturally that got the mercs attention. Landesman, for one, had come to the Fall to make money, and was quite happy to make it without having to fight for it. After all, he wasn't one of the thrill-killers, nor had he gone native.

Upon his signal, four of the camouflaged soldiers moved out and faced the pilgrims over guns armed and pointed without being aimed, yet. Landesman joined them.

'What might you have for us?' he asked, keeping his tone conversational.

Hefting a rucksack onto the ground, the woman removed several small canvas bags and tossed them over to Landesman. They contained jewellery, as he'd hoped, rather than cash; jewellery could be melted down or sold intact. Cash needed banking.

'Done!' he said, then: 'Let them pass,' into his helmet speaker.

'Why?' asked one of the men. Landesman swore quietly. Dukas; gone native after spending over a year here on the Fall.

'My orders,' said the NCO, sharply.

Dukas straightened up and moved out of cover with his gun muzzle pointing at the pilgrims.

'We could kill them all and take their bribes anyway.'

The thin woman folded her arms, looking between the arguing soldiers.

'There's more of us than you, and we have weapons,' she pointed out, accurately. 'Hard to spend your money if you're dead,' she added.

Dukas' jaw was visibly working under his goggles, and his fingers were trembling on his gun's stock and foregrip. He brought his gun up smartly but much too slowly; Landesman shot him in the head.

Kicking the now-headless corpse, the NCO looked over at the pilgrim's spokeswoman, who had flinched at the killing.

'Sorry about that. Been here over a year, gone native. The rest of you, pay attention; when I give an order, I expect it to be carried out.'

There was little sympathy for the dead soldier. After all, it meant more loot for the rest of them.

Landesman watched the pilgrims move off, before intercepting the spokeswoman.

'Keep off the valley bottom or you'll run into more patrols. Head west-north-west and you'll be out of Bayer 50's polity within twelve hours.'

She nodded silent thanks to him.

'And watch out when you get to Lyonesse's polity. They're nearly all gone, but they left some weird death-traps behind.'

This time she actually spoke the thanks. He shrugged.

'I don't want other patrols finding out I let you pass. As for the warnings, you've done well to get this far with this many. Good luck.'

He meant it.


	8. Chapter 8

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER EIGHT

Martha marvelled once more at how the Doctor could soak up information at a rate a mere human being would have found impossible to achieve. He'd dialled into a broadcast system being used by Netrosphere, piping in news stories taking place in the here and now; then he'd hacked into a news database for information going back over several years, and then began reading a print newspaper picked up en route to the Caernarvon Caff. Nor did he stop his flow of chit-chat and banter with her, managing to make sense nearly all the time. She pondered, professionally, how his mental processes must run – perhaps in a parallel process instead of the serial functions of homo sapiens. Well, he did have two hearts, so why not twin trains of thought simultaneously?

Now, having absorbed all that information, he'd left her the paper with instructions to read it.

'Try me. Read the headlines out loud.'

' "Earth's Goodwill UN Ambassador Arrives for Tour of Outer Rim Worlds",' she began. ' "Lord Terence Goodkind, appointed to the post of roving ambassador - '

'Goodwill nothing! Reminding the locals that Earth is keeping an eye on them,' opined the Doctor, sourly. 'Next!'

'Oh. Okay, "New Hypervelocity Luminal Transmission system to begin operating by early next year, say project heads. This will help to secure Zeta Reticuli IV's position in the local information-brokering - '

'Boring! Information shuffling. Who cares how many bits of bytes get sent. Next!'

' "Red Star Evacuates Another 3K". Ah – this is about Hargreave's Fall. "Another mercy mission has been run by Red Star to the tragic, war-torn planet that is our closest inhabited world."'

'Telling, isn't it?'

Martha thought she knew what he meant.

'It's still front page news, just not the most important.'

'Got it in one! See, knocking around the galaxy with me has sharpened your wits already.'

For all his lightness of tone, the Doctor was worried, and deeply. According to the records he'd been reading, Hargreave's Fall suffered what the journalists dubbed "The Breakdown" generations ago. Practically overnight their civilisation had succumbed to warfare and conflict. Population pressure, the pundits agreed. Political differences, said others. Solar radiation, something-in-the-water, disease, inbreeding – all had been put forward as explanations. Whatever the reason, the population of the Fall had decreased from seventy five million to twenty five million, with a few hundred thousand evacuees getting to be successfully rescued by the Red Star.

The madness continued. Nobody who remained long-term on the Fall remained sane, apparently. There was a thriving business in mercenary warfare – which explained the trio of Judoon that he and Martha had spotted at the market - the soldiers-for-hire signing on for different polities across the planet and being careful not to stay longer than eleven months. Even then, a certain percentage "went native" and remained behind, willing to fight and kill and die for free. A peace-keeping mission sent from Earth back at the beginning of The Breakdown had been savagely attacked, before reverting to the kind of behaviour it had been sent to stop.

'Right. Time to do a bit of first-hand information-checking,' he declared. 'And a chance for you to shine a little.'

Martha raised an eyebrow.

'Meaning what?'

'You keep harping on about "nearly being a doctor". I intend to go and have a look at a few patients, courtesy of the Red Star.'

'Patients from Hargreaves' Fall.'

'Yup.'

Martha shook her head.

'If they run hospitals of the future the way they do in my time, you're not going to get anywhere near a patient. Confidentiality, security, data protection, doctor-patient relationship - '

The Doctor waved a small credit-card holder.

'Hah! Between you and this, I think I'll get to see what I want.'

The young woman squinted, suspecting that her leg was being pulled.

'What, you think Clubcard points are going to get you bedside interviews? As if!'

Red Star's nearest clinic lay over a hundred kilometres distant, which would have been a mere second's travel in the TARDIS, if the Doctor had deigned to use it. Instead he insisted on making the overland trek in local, Netrosphere, transport. This turned out to be a vehicle combining both hovercraft and jet aircraft in it's design, rapid, dusty and with only a few other passengers who queued outside the low-rise shuttle terminal. Instead of paying, the Doctor merely showed his credit-card to the human driver, indicating Martha with his thumb.

'She's with me. Okay?'

'Yes _sir_!' snapped the driver, sitting bolt upright and with a gleam in his eyes. Martha followed the Doctor down the gritty aisle and carefully avoided looking at any of the other passengers. Instead of a seat-belt she found a well-worn padded cradle that snapped down over the upper torso. This proved vital when they took off and performed stomach-crampingly dangerous driving over the sandy plains.

'Ex-fighter pilot, I bet,' grinned the Doctor, looking out of a porthole and apparently enjoying himself hugely. 'Slumming it after leaving the Fall. Whoah! Did you see that?'

Gripping the cradle with frantic determination, Martha refused to look out of the portholes. That way, she could pretend they were only on a ride at Alton Towers.

'Come on, you're not broadening your horizons,' chided the Time Lord. 'We came here to help you see a bit of the universe.'

'Doctor!' retorted the young woman, with feeling. 'If I go seeing out of those windows you'll see the colour of my breakfast!'

With two stops to pick up other passengers, a mixed collection of humans and aliens, it took them two hours to reach the sprawling low-rise cluster of buildings that constituted Red Star's regional hospital.

'No horizontal constraints, you see,' beamed the Doctor. 'Expand into the space available.'

This was wasted on Martha, busy studying the scuffed seat-back in front of her. Her attention only returned to the world outside when the shuttle dropped vertically and landed with a hull-rattling thud.

'We ought to take your box of tricks next time!' she muttered to the Time Lord. 'That was awful.'

'Hold onto that thought.'

There was no clarification from the Doctor until he marched into "Receiving". Martha looked around and recognised a hospital waiting area: catering to cleanliness and ergonomic efficiency, big and cold-feeling. Yep. Redolent of antiseptic, cooking, floor cleaner too. Identical the galaxy over irrespective of time.

A suite of receptionists sat behind the fake wooden counter, taking phone queries and dealing face to face with the arrivals.

'Yes?' asked one who looked almost artificial, almost exactly like her sister alongside and almost exactly politeness personified.

'Severe travel sickness,' pronounced the Doctor, sounding sombre and serious. The receptionist scanned Martha's face.

'Dispensary. Currently a thirty minute wait.'

The receptionist pressed a button at her desk and a foil ticket scrolled outwards from a slot on the counter, which the Doctor seized upon with a gleeful cackle. An illuminated arrow on the ticket glowed in green when they headed in the right direction, pulsed when they strayed and glowed red when their footsteps carried them too close to restricted quarters. Martha glanced back at the Reception counter from sheer habit and nearly fell over.

'Doctor! Those women didn't have any legs!'

'Left, left, left – of course not, they aren't and they don't. Straight on here. Mind the SPS.'

Stretching her stride to keep up, Martha threw another glance backwards. Not a leg between all six of them!

'Androids,' muttered the Doctor over his shoulder. 'Scanning and first-stage diagnostics. We needed you looking peaky to get past them.'

The foil ticket flashed red arrows at them. The Doctor ignored his ticket and strode at a pair of electronically sealed doors, which remained sealed for only as long as it took him to produce the sonic screwdriver.

'Let's find somebody important.'

'Try going upwards, then,' warned Martha. 'The seniors and consultants won't mix with riff-raff on the ground level.'

They found a staff lift, which had a burly uniformed guard minding it. One look at the mysterious card and he threw the Doctor a salute and Martha a warm glance, bounded aside and let them in.

' "Senior Staff, Human and Non-Human Specialisms, Nano-applications, Alien Locums, Android Consultation." Which do we choose? Let's try "Human". Human I'm good at. How about yourself?'

'I am human!'

The Doctor slapped his forehead.

' 'Course you are! Sometimes I forget. That is, when you act almost as intelligently as me.' he wagged a finger at her. 'Oh, before I forget, all the old infectious diseases are gone, most of the old human ailments you were familiar with have been gengineered away as well. So think before speaking!'

Stopping in mid-stride, he examined the plaque on an unprepossessing door.

' "Professor Ross: Human and Alien Surgery". We'll do him. Or her. Can't be an android, or they'd only have a number.'

The office that lay behind the bland and characterless door featured a carpet with a trim verdant pile that resembled a golfing green. Professor Ross, a small, ginger-haired man going bald on top, stood to one side of the room with both hands deep in a hologram, twisting and turning his wrists and flexing his fingers. Martha looked closely at the three-dimensional translucent box, recognising that it seemed to be showing a set of internal organs that the professor was poking with ghostly extensible arms.

'There. Done. Ah! Who are you?' he blurted, clearly taken by surprise on turning round.

Silently, the Doctor held up his little credit-card holder. The professor looked at it, frowned and grunted, then padded back across the floor to his desk. Both visitors followed. The professor took off his shiny white coat and draped it over the back of his swivel seat.

'Go on, sit. "UN Special Representatives"? You've come out with that buffoon Goodkind, haven't you. Go on, tell me what you want.'

'I'm - '

'And _who_ you are,' interrupted Professor Ross.

'I'm The Doctor, and this is Martha.'

'Medical student. About to take my clinical exams.'

They both got a distinctly unimpressed look.

'One thing Red Star endures is a surfeit of doctors. And what do you want?'

The Doctor put on his best sincere expression, adopting it as a modeller might alter the exterior of a toy.

'We've been hearing terrible things about Hargreave's Fall since arriving here. Terrible things! A state of total anarchy and chaos, mass suffering, huge population losses, all of that. Naturally I'm interested and felt like getting background information from people who have to deal with the crisis on a daily basis.'

'Hum,' said the professor. He sat and looked between them, making Martha feel like an insect on a slide. The Doctor began to worry that his practiced charm, psychic pass and air of commitment might not be enough to persuade –

'Well, quite by chance, you came to one of the best people to ask. Or was it chance, hum?'

'I'd heard your name connected with the Fall,' lied the Doctor, casually crossing his legs in a manner that underlined his earlier, fictional connection with Ross.

'Yes. First came out here twenty-five years ago, hoping to save the world. Not this world, the other one – the Fall.'

Rolling up a shirt sleeve, he displayed a long, jagged white scar down his left forearm.

'A permanent souvenir of our third mission over there.'

'Impressive!' whistled the Doctor.

'Nice stitching,' apprised Martha. 'No loss of muscle or tendon usage?'

The professor smirked - just a little.

'No. It can tingle in bad weather. Did the stapling myself, actually. I've got a blaster scar too, but displaying it would offend my dignity and your eyesight.'

This opening was better than any the Doctor had hoped for. Bringing Martha along had been an excellent idea – his knowledge of human, Gallifreyan and humanoid pathology tended to flow into one giant inaccurate blur.

'Your Third mission, Professor? Obviously that was some time ago. I didn't realise Netrosphere had sent mercy missions so far back.'

That unimpressed gleam came back to the dour doctor's eyes.

'Despite what Earth thinks or believes, the Fall is not a total wasteland. We still send out

evacuation teams if enough sane survivors can assemble in a single place and notify us. Back when I arrived here Red Star used to despatch a mission every year.'

He rubbed the snaking scar on his arm without seeming to realise. 'We soon learnt better.'

The Doctor cocked his head enquiringly, without comment.

'Those affected by The Breakdown don't want to be evacuated. In fact, they will fight to the death to avoid being taken off the Fall. They will kill, in order to be left there to be killed. Our fourth mission was massacred on the ground by people they were trying to rescue.'

To judge from Ross's testimony, the early years of trying to evacuate population from the Fall were highly dangerous. Mission Ten never even managed to land any of it's six ships; destroyed by some terror-weapon left over from the earliest days of the conflict, most probably. Mission Twenty-Two "went native" and none returned. Rootless mercenaries occasionally hijacked evacuation vessels to get off-world in a hurry.

'Down to basics. What is the cause?' asked the Doctor.

'You seen peculiarly interested for a UN rep, Doctor. I can't remember anyone from Earth ever being so interested.'

'Don't tell me. They see the Fall as "A small country far away", eh?' ventured the Time Lord. 'Try this quote: no man is an island -'

' " - entire in himself. The death of any man diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind. Therefore never send to ask for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee",' quoted Martha from memory.

Somewhat nonplussed, the professor looked between the two sitting in front of him.

'Interested. Interested because I detest war, violence and injustice and make it my business to prevent any one or all three if I can. Generally, I can. This time I need some background information.'

Professor Ross squinted suspiciously at the tall, intense stranger, whose slightly-forced polite enquiry had become a passionate declaration.

The dour Scot had been around the galaxy, seen a lot of life and lifeforms and didn't fool easily; this stranger spoke the truth. The black woman had impressed him by completing that quote from Donne. He didn't know the whole thing himself, but it was on the frontispage of his very, very battered paper Hemingway collection, and it had fired his youthful self to volunteer for Red Star.

Checking his electronic diary, he saw a short space between his Distance Demonstration via Holographic Transmission, and a meeting with senior clinical staff about new protocols that the Charity Commissioners wanted to impose. Say, thirty minutes given sidereal time.

'Hum. Follow me, and I'll show you. Better than me speaking a lot.'

He led them back to the lifts and down several floors, ending up in an open-plan room with the legend "Archives" hung over it. There were computer screens and desks available, which the Professor ignored. He spoke briefly to the librarian on duty and obtained a carrel, plus a handful of what looked like pencils to Martha.

'Holographic data stores,' whispered the Doctor to her.

Once in the carrel, Professor Ross dimmed the light and inserted one of the pencil-shaped store units into a slot in the desk unit. A bright, golden, three dimensional hologram sprang into existence in front of the three observers. Martha instantly recognised a cross-section of the human brain, bisected neatly down the corpus callosum. Neurology wasn't one of her specialisms, but she scanned the image intently and fancied she saw damage to the hypothalamus.

The professor used a light wand to point inside the hologram to the – hypothalamus.

'This is the cause of the behavioural changes. Irreparable damage to the hypothalamus in every case, and associated alterations in neurochemistry. The symptoms are raised levels of aggressive behaviour, rapid transition to violence, and a worrying reversion to tribalism.'

He brought up a dozen other holograms of other patients, all displaying small, subtle and devastating changes to the limbic system.

'None of these holos are recent – they date back over thirty years to when we were trying to evacuate those affected. As you know, the brain is the one organ we still can't use nanotechnology to repair. So "irreperable" really is final, incurable damage in these cases. The behaviour seems to peak once every Fall year, then fall off until the following year.'

The Doctor cradled his elbow and looked hard at the images. Martha glanced at him and began asking questions out of sheer vocational interest.

'You don't know what causes the condition?'

'Hum. I wish we did. A lot of speculation but no concrete facts.'

'Disease?'

The professor shook his head.

'No. Oh, I can guess what you're thinking – a military biological agent, a warbug. No. A lot of people did die from designed killers – neo-plague, super-Q, bonerot – but they aren't the cause of this condition. Nor is it anything in the history of human pathology.'

'Okay, then it isn't hereditary or a normal human disease. No genetic trigger. Environmental then – a poison or toxin only found on the Fall?'

With a bleak grin, the Scot shook his head.

'No. Keep trying, though. I've not had to think these reasons through for years. No, we've never found any agent in a toxicological screen that could cause this kind of nerve damage. The body tissues of the normal evacuees are exactly the same as the insane ones.'

A frown creased Martha's brow. Not a disease, not a poison.

'A parasite? A multi-cellular organism that focussed on the limbic system. Like an amoeba, with an affinity for brain-cells instead of hepatic ones.'

'Hum. Good guess. Incorrect, however. No trace of any alien organisms in the brain.'

So, mused the young woman, feeling on her medical mettle. Not a disease, either created or naturally-occurring. Nothing poisonous. No living vector involved.

'How about the environment itself?' the Doctor suddenly asked. Pathology might be a long-forgotten resource, but planets and their environs – those he knew about.

'You're a bit broad there, Doctor. Doctor - ?' ended the professor, angling for a name. The UN SpecRep card only had a title. 'You need to be more specific.'

'Specific, eh? What if there's something in the air. Something in the water. Something in the earth, in the soil, which gets into the food chain, gets into the food, then gets into the victims.'

The professor turned the glittering golden hologram off, then turned the carrel lighting back on. Under the abruptly increased illumination he looked tired, middle-aged and unsure of himself.

'I don't really think that's a possibility, Doctor. Hargreave's Fall was surveyed very comprehensively before a single settler landed. The settlers themselves resurveyed the whole planet. They didn't find any potential threats.'

_Surveying_, no matter how excellent, simply wasn't as effective as _settling,_ in the Doctor's opinion. You could never really guarantee how an ecology would take to human colonisation until it got human colonists. An exotic threat might only come into existence when in close proximity to humans in large numbers, or when humans moved into the neighbourhood.

'Well, you know how it is, Professor. You set out to colonise a world, you land, you get comfy, you expand, and before you know it – Wham! You discover your lovely safe new home has a few serpents at the bottom of the garden. I mean, what if the population on Hargreave's Fall got bitten, metaphorically.'

Getting into the flow of his argument, the Doctor carried on.

'Say, a change in the stellar output, or a breakdown in the local equivalent of the Van Allen belts, or an upsurge in radioactive emissions from the planetary core, or airborne elements from vulcanism, or – wait a minute, what about the old IMC personnel? Did any of them display any symptoms?'

The professor's watch pinged gently and repeatedly, reminding him of the Charity Commissioners. They wouldn't brook any delay, late arrival or excuses.

'Look, sorry but I have a meeting I – and the Red Star – cannot afford to miss. If you've any further questions, please ask the head archivist.'

Despite being in a hurry, he took the time to introduce them to the grey-haired, frosty and disapproving librarian, an archetype Martha was familiar with from university.

' "IMC"?' she repeated as Professor Ross waved a hasty goodbye.

'Yes. I want to see if any of their personnel suffered symptoms similar to any in The Breakdown.'

'We call it the Breakdown Effect, now,' corrected the archivist. She still looked interested, seeming to find the challenge stimulating. She pressed buttons on her desk and brought up an interactive hologrammatic filing index, flipping past letters of the alphabet until reaching "I".

'Interstellar Mining Corporation,' enlarged the Doctor, helpfully.

'No Interstellar Mining Corporation here,' she muttered. 'There is are two entries for "IMC", but one is "Interlaken Mineral Consortium" and the other is "Indira Manjothi Cleaning". One based in Switzerland and the other in New Delhi.'

Whole minutes ticked by as the woman accessed another database and cross-checked with a third composed of media headlines, bylines and abstracts.

'Here we are – "IMC post profits warning for third successive year". "IMC file for bankruptcy protection", dated Twenty Six Seventy Three. "IMC broken up in sale of assets to creditors", dated Twenty Six Seventy Five. Several centuries gone, I'm afraid.'

One theory, that the greedy mining entity might have returned to the Fall and tried to complete what it started through hideous unknowable psychosis, died the death.

'Any headlines about IMC personnel suffering from Breakdown effects?'

After another five minutes, the librarian admitted defeat – if any such reference had ever been made, she couldn't find it.

Another five minutes saw a horrified Martha jogging to keep up with her mentor, who now sported a doctor's shiny white metallic coat, appropriated from a personal locker that hadn't been able to resist the sonic screwdriver for longer than a second.

'That was stealing!' she whispered fiercely.

With the air of a man who belonged on the Inpatient ward, and who bestowed the largesse of recognition upon lesser medical mortals, the Doctor stopped at a bedside.

'Not my fault that infrasonic fibrillation has yet to make it big in human technology. Hmm. What do you think of this, Miss Jones?'

In his hand was a large plastic sheet that held a pen-like probe on the edge. Three buttons lay on the bottom border. Before she could take in the many different graphs that pulsed on the sheet, the Doctor whisked it away from her, pressing the buttons in sequence.

'Yes, I agree. High temperature, blood sugar imbalance, borderline malnutrition. How do you feel?' he asked the patient, a drawn and grey-haired woman in her forties or fifties.

'Tired, doctor. The fever gets you down. Better than back on the Fall,' replied the patient. 'I wish we could have made it to Cormelle, though, after all our trying.'

Training and curiosity took over for Martha, so she leaned forward to inspect the woman, who visibly brightened at the approach.

'Like a proper doctor! A lot of them think I've got a warbug, won't come near me. They send over one of them awful robots instead.'

With an air of command, the Doctor replaced the intelligent clipboard and smiled winningly.

'Not at all! They're just stretched to capacity with all the new arrivals. You're in the best place to be. Make sure you eat all your greens, get plenty of rest and drink lots of water.'

He dragged Martha away before other medical staff got interested in them. Moving on to the next bed, he charmed the surly teenaged boy into a brief description of his symptoms - another fever victim - and allowed Martha another hasty investigation. With occasional exceptions – a mercenary missing an arm, a medic who'd been shot – the patients were mostly suffering from exhaustion, and a low-grade fever caused by non-fatal Fall micro-organisms.

This procedure continued for half an hour, until a nurse challenged them. The Doctor abruptly switched persona, becoming very brisk and businesslike in a complete change from his balmy bedside manner of a few seconds earlier.

'About time! I've been walking around this ward completely unchallenged, without any credentials, accessing the private personal data of your patients! This is not how we expect our funds to be either allocated or used!'

'Yeah!' added Martha, wagging a pen for emphasis.

Panicked and expecting this fiery Charity Commissioner to sack her on the spot, the startled nurse begged pardon and rushed to get a pair of auxilliaries to monitor the ward. This allowed the Doctor and Martha to make a discreet departure, bumping through the medical airlock exit as an angry man barged in.

'My coat's been stolen - ' came from behind them in loud, aggrieved tones.

The Doctor departed the Red Star centre and made his way to the shuttle stand in silence, busily thinking.

Any possibility of the mysterious Breakdown being a naturally-occurring environmental phenomenon could go right out the window, along with the possibility of it being a disease, genetically-tailored or otherwise. There was no common ground amongst the evacuees, either: they came in different ages, gender, races and occupations, so there didn't seem to be any reason why they hadn't undergone the transition to savagery.

Foul play at work, pretttty obviously. Not IMC, which was long defunct. There didn't seem to be any other entity that would carry out such an attack. No. The answers to the problem would be found in one place: Hargreave's Fall.

Martha had her own conclusions. She, too, rejected the idea of a disease causing the madness. Medical science, epidemiology and pathology in this, the future, would inevitably have found any such cause. The cause had to be native to Hargreave's Fall.

'We need - ' they both began simultaneously.

Joining the queue for the return shuttle, both stopped and waited for the other to begin again.

'We need to travel to the Fall,' said Martha. 'That's the only place we'll discover what's causing this mass insanity.'

'You bet!' agreed the Doctor, with feeling. 'Of course, it'll be deadly dangerous.'

Martha nodded solemnly as her travelling companion warmed to the subject.

'The Breakdown Effect could hit us. Or one of those "warbugs" mentioned. Or hostile natives. Or mercenaries.'

'Steady on,' muttered the young woman. 'I did say "need", not "want".'

The Doctor directed a steely gaze at her, one that carried a lot of unspoken feeling.

'Fifty million dead argue quite strongly for "need", Martha, whatever we want. Earth is too distant, too unconcerned and has tried and failed already. Netrosphere hasn't the manpower or money or willpower to tackle the problem. The Red Star can only just cope with evacuations and nothing else. We are the external agents, the extra hand, the - '

'Yeah, I get the picture,' grumbled Martha, slightly humbled by the Doctor, who punched her on the arm.

'Come on! It'll be terrific fun!'

'I doubt it.'

The arriving shuttle whined in and banked to land, leaving scudding dust flurries dancing across the hardstand.

''course it will, because to avoid extra trouble and to get more info on the way there, we're going in as a couple of mercenaries!' declared the Doctor. 'Killers for hire, that's what we'll be. Brilliant, eh?'


	9. Chapter 9

PART THREE: "THERE"

PART THREE: "THERE"

CHAPTER NINE

The Doctor's first choice of transport to the Fall would have been Captain Dowd, still holding court in the Caernarvon Caff, had that touchstone of morality refused to have anything to do with "mercs". The loathing he imbued a single word with was impressive to hear. His Chief Engineer, nibbling at a gingerbread, looked at them with a lack of like.

'Not _real_ soldiers for hire! no no no. No, but what I need is to get a picture en route of what the real ones are thinking about their destination. We may pick up useful information that's not available anywhere else.'

That still didn't cut any ice with the officer.

'Very worthy. However, the mercs travel in big bunches, up to a hundred at a time. If a ship lands with only two killers aboard then the locals are going to wonder why. So will the other mercenaries.'

Slumping in a chair, the Doctor brushed hair out of his eyes.

'Where's that girl of yours?' asked the Captain, frowning and not expecting a happy answer.

'Martha? Off getting a couple of uniforms from the market.' Incongruously, the Time Lord stuck a leg out and wondered about his inside leg measurement. Captain Dowd frowned again, then sighed.

'Oh, alright, alright, if you're serious about going and getting killed or going mad, then the _El Arish_ is the ship to catch. F12 on the hardstands, a hundred nemmies per person travelling to the Fall. Another hundred for the return.'

Satisfied with this information, the Doctor indulged in a Spam fritter that cost him the terrestrial equivalent of a three course meal with coffee and mints. Savouring it meant eating it slowly, so Martha arrived with the two uniforms she'd been briefed upon before he emptied the plate.

'No red berets, Doctor,' she apologised. 'Only green ones. The pattern is different on our jackets – I couldn't get one with your chest measurements off-the-rack. Have a look.'

The uniforms were simple refractive mimicloth, with an overlaid pattern of mixed greens and browns on a buff base. Naturally they possessed a surplus of straps, buttons, pockets, pouches and insignia for the casual soldier for hire; the more professional versions tended to come ready-equipped with less glamorous and more practical kit.

Eyeing up the material, the Doctor felt glad that Martha had been the one to go and get it, since he'd have been completely rubbish at choosing sizes or styles. Being rather daring, the two travellers used the café's washroom to change into their disguises, emerging to the muted amusement of Captain Dowd and his Chief Engineer.

'How do I look?' asked the Doctor, holding his hands up in a gesture that said "Behold!".

'Like an unmade bed,' replied Dowd, instantly and accurately. 'She's not much better.'

Martha scowled fiercely; her uniform-wearing to date amounted to hospital scrubs, the Guides and a John Menzies sales assistant's dress back in 1969. Managing to look martial didn't come easily to her, and was obviously completely beyond the Doctor.

Captain Dowd and the other officer exchanged pitying glances and several words in Welsh. The Senior Engineer, a compact man who wore a dapper uniform with confidence, got up and helped both travellers to tidy, smarten, tighten and tauten their appearance. The Captain nodded in approval once this process was complete.

'A final word of warning, Doctors Smith and Jones. Cormelle is the one polity on Hargreave's Fall that doesn't recruit any mercenaries, so don't pretend you're going there.'

The _El Arish _had originally been a Russian orbital tug, built for endurance and survival instead of comfort. She had then been bought up by a combine out on the settled rim, used hard and sold again to the current freelance military crew. The "passenger deck" was nothing of the sort; it was merely the ventral equipment bay covered in rubber matting, anechoic panels and acceleration benches.

It smelt, too. Old, ingrained industrial smells from years of heavy work, overlaid with the fug of humans kept in close proximity too long, with too little hygiene.

Petros silently classified the other ninety-odd soldiers making up this complement, out of professional habit. Those handful of hard-faced and tanned men – plus a pair of hatchet-faced, crop-headed women – they were real mercenaries. Maybe back on a second tour, playing the Brain Lottery again. The giggling, fooling, squeaky ones were nervous, niaive thrill-seekers looking for adventure. Much like Spiros had behaved, doubtless. Odd singles were probably solo and psychopathic, that mental abberration impossible to eradicate from the human condition. Out to kill for enjoyment.

Two pairs of mercenaries stood out from the rest. The fact that they were in pairs, where everyone else was either single or part of a much larger group, made them unusual by default. The first pair most obviously stood out, because they were Judoon. They were valued on the Fall, his research told him, because they didn't suffer from Breakdown Effect. They didn't turn up in large numbers, and were only here in between much bigger jobs.

The second pair were human. A man, tall and spare, with a shock of unruly hair that escaped from beneath a cockily-angled beret, and a black woman who – and Petros used his professional judgement here, too – was quite striking. Neither mixed with any of the other groups, chatting quietly to one another, sat comfortably on an acceleration couch. Only after several minutes did Petros realise that the tall stranger was focussing attention on different groups before talking to his companion. Not looking at the singles, like himself, just the groups.

With a flutter of surprise, Petros realised the stranger was lip-reading. That had to be it. Watch the mercs chatter, describe their conversations to the woman.

Well, well. The skill of a spy.

Who was this man? Aha. Perhaps one of that interfering fop Goodkind's retinue, a spy who went abroad whilst all attention fell on the ambassador. Surely Earth wasn't taking an interest in Hargreave's Fall again, after all these years – and why risk a spy travelling there, putting their mind at risk?

The woman caught him staring at her and stared back, briefly, before turning to remark to her tall companion, who responded with a cheery grin and wave at Petros.

Well! he thought, expecting anything but that reply. A scowl, a frown, a finger drawn across the throat, yes. Smiles and polite acknowledgement, not from a mercenary guarding his mistress.

He got up to cross the dirty rubber matting, curiosity warring with discretion and winning.

'He's coming over!' whispered Martha.

'Curiouser and curiouser. I think we puzzle him just as much as he puzzles us.'

"Us"? wondered Martha. She darted a glance at the approaching stranger. Dark complexion, almost Mediterranean. The usual fancy combat fatigues. Big, macho boots. A knife taped to the inside sleeve of his left forearm. Sunglasses. Which made him a poser, wearing them inside a spaceship!

Stopping and bowing with sincerity, the stranger sat down on an acceleration couch opposite the Doctor.

'Greetings. I am Petros Vendrakos.' He took off the sunglasses, revealing one normal, brown eye and another that glowed solid red in a metallic socket, dotted around the rim with tiny crystals.

Martha took in a deep breath in surprise. He looked like the robots from that Arnie film her brother worshipped -

The Doctor leaned forward and raised his eyebrows, examining.

'Nice workmanship!' he declared. 'Night vision as well?'

Petros Vendrakos replaced the glasses, nodding.

'Expensive, getting that done,' continued the Doctor in his effortless manner, imparting information whilst not seeming to.

If it's expensive then he's got money, so why fight for money if he's already got it, ran Martha's train of thought. Just as her mentor intended.

'Yes. Like you, I am not a mercenary.'

The Doctor leaned back. Folding his arms, he broke into a grin and winked.

'No you're not, are you! Your profession is judging people, making qualitative assessments based on what you witness.' He stage-whispered to Martha. 'Body language, non-verbal communication, parataxis, even smell – be careful around this fellah!'

This time Petros leaned back. He didn't speak for several seconds, making Martha wonder if the Doctor had broken a strange local taboo. Then he made an admissory gesture with hands and shoulders.

'Correct. I am a bloodlines broker.'

'Ellenika, right? Major industry there, Martha.'

All this information was a little too fast for Martha. Seeing the universe was one thing, having an information overload was another.

'What - ' she began before the Doctor anticipated and talked over her.

'Genetic engineering applied to livestock and sporting animals. And people. Horses, sheep, pigeons, dogs, chickens, and those who love looking into mirrors. Big business for the big brokerage firms. Hundreds of billions of nemmies worth of business. Oh yes, wizards with a chromosome whisk.'

A corner of the other man's mouth twitched upwards.

'O muse of science,' he said. 'We are indeed the technological children of Earth's diaspora.'

This sounded like a quote to Martha, but one from the present time and nothing at all from Hemingway. Or Shakespeare.

The off-worlder regarded the two travellers with a deadpan face. The Doctor came to a decision and carried on.

'You're correct about us, too. We're going to Hargreave's Fall to investigate the Breakdown Effect. Going as soldiers of fortune helps us to arrive without standing out too much.'

Petros made a curious flicking gesture with his right hand. A sudden sign of nerves, in a man who didn't look particularly bothered only seconds before.

'You didn't say why _you_ were on your way,' pointed out Martha, tellingly.

'My youngest brother, Spiros.'

Spiros Vendrakos, the youngest of seven brothers, had been serving an indenture to a databank trading house on Netrosphere, since the family wanted to branch out from their normal business. Unfortunately the younger Vendrakos, finding data a deadly dull affair, had taken a shuttle to Hargreaves Fall in search of excitement. This had left the extended Vendrakos family in an outraged uproar; their long-nurtured Hellenic tradition and pride demanded that the abscondee be found and returned. Petros volunteered to track his errant sibling down, undergoing what he blandly described as "procedures" to give him a better chance.

'It may be too late already,' remarked the Doctor, gently. Petros shrugged.

'The Breakdown has not struck for nine months. Spiro did his national service, so he isn't completely useless if cast upon his own resources. If he's alive I will find him. If he's dead, I will still find him. Either way I will bring him home.'

Changing the subject, their new acquaintance proved the worth of travelling by spaceship instead of by TARDIS. He mentioned, again, that mysterious place-name "Cormelle".

'Hang on, hang on, I've heard that place spoken of before. A refugee was trying to get there. What is it, exactly?'

Petros flicked his right hand again.

'Exactly? I can't say, I haven't been there. A sanctuary, from what I've heard. One of the few places that didn't tear itself apart or get destroyed by it's neighbours. If you can make it there, they take you in without exception. Since they aren't at war with anyone, they don't like or need mercenaries.'

Just as Captain Dowd warned us. Sounds like the Promised Land, mused the Doctor to himself. An oasis in a sea of anarchy.

Impulsively, and typically, he suddenly concluded that the pacific idyll of Cormelle was nothing of the sort, and that he'd need to get there and investigate the doubtless black-hearted inhabitants. Why didn't it figure in any of the broadcast or recorded media? Petros had a theory for that, too.

'It's not a large polity, not like the later settlements. It doesn't blow things up or kill people. It's not very attention-worthy. Good news is bad news, and there are other horror stories on the Fall a journalist can find with less bother.'

After nineteen boring, smelly hours, the _El Arish_ began to manouevre for orbital entry into the darkside of Hargreave's Fall. Warning lights came on and stayed on, the passengers buckled into their acceleration couches and with only a few stomach-flipping acrobatics, the crew brought the battered old ship to a decent landing. A croaky tannoy announced that they were fifteen kilometres from the nearest polity of Oobix.

The weapons lockers were unsealed and those mercenaries who had brought firearms retrieved them, under the watchful eye of the ship's master-at-arms and an American army-surplus warobot. Most of the mercs were grateful for the chance to stretch, breath fresh honest air – hopefully not contaminated with any chemical or biological weapons – and decide where to head off for. Everyone leaving by the exit ramp got a smart-card that incorporated a fifty-day countdown and a directional indicator, so they could meet up with the _El Arish_ when it came back in just over seven weeks.

Nobody noticed two mercenaries, a tall, lanky man and his attractive black female partner, slip away quietly whilst everyone else got their earth-legs back again.

'Thank heavens I picked up on all those conversations back in that sweat-locker,' muttered the Doctor to Martha. She fended a jungle creeper aside to keep up alongside him on the track and felt condensation run from it into her sleeve.

'All the booby-traps, you mean?'

'Ahum. Booby traps and dead-man's-handle weapons. Leprosy swamps. Intelligent darts. Steerable poison gas clouds.' He cast a wry look at her. 'You lot. Always coming up with new ways to kill yourselves!'

The words of Petros Vendrakos came back to Martha.

'The technology of – of Earth's diaspora, Doctor. Humans are an inventive lot.'

She meant it lightly, dismissively, even. Yet it foreshadowed attempted genocide.

Initially the Doctor's plan had been to traverse the continents of the Fall, searching for clues or causes for the Breakdown Effect. Now, having found how dangerous it would be to wander abroad for long, he decided to make for the TARDIS. The timeship had been sent ahead of the shuttle, pre-set to arrive on Hargreave's Fall's second major continent.

Martha felt far happier to be out in the open, or what passed for open in the verdant tropic garden they were wading into. Vines, creepers, flowers, calling birds, small scuttling lizards, strange pungent smells – the whole array of sensual stimulation, made all the more physical by her isolation in the smelly metal box of _El Arish_.

'It's a bit like Bermuda,' she commented. 'Mum took us there to meet her relatives. Really nice and sunny.'

Aware that the Doctor was not paying much attention, she stopped talking and began to follow and watch her mentor, nostalgically recalling her ninth birthday in the City of Hamilton.

Less romantically and more practically, the Doctor felt his chronotrophic senses begin to tug gently, yet insistently, to the north-east. That way lay the TARDIS. He concentrated on the faint impulse, understanding that he was being pretty ignorant to Martha.

'Not trying to be horrid,' he drawled whilst he searched mentally. 'Just looking. Looking and finding. Heading thirty seven fourteen.'

Their pace was modest. Even if the landscape seemed untouched there was no saying that a programmed booby-trap might not lie over the next ridge. Twice they passed groups of skeletons, one set old and green and mossy, the second still clad in rags. Once, an overgrown trail led past an array of rusting, collapsed vehicles that had fallen in amongst themselves and now sported bird's nests for decoration. And, more worryingly, they passed a semi-circle of dirty sandbags where a smattering of bright metallic links lay scattered all over the peaty jungle floor.

'Not good,' warned the Doctor.

'Bright metal. No rust or mould or dulling, so whatever those bits are, they're recent? Am I right?'

Her guess was proved entirely correct when the jungle around them abruptly swarmed with soldiers springing from cover. Weapons were levelled as the ambushers exchanged call signs and closed in on the duo. Half a dozen laser spots appeared on the Doctor's camouflaged chest.

'Advance and identify,' snapped a soldier.

'Doctors John Smith and Martha Jones. Freelancers. Looking for a contract,' announced the Doctor in a fairly good mimicry of Doctor Ross.

A chorus of disgusted muttering came from the ambushers and they lowered their weapons, unhappy that their prey proved to be so unrewarding. Not a threat, no weapons to steal and without money to rob.

'Aw no, not more of yourn,' drawled one of the soldiers.

'Not in this patch, you're not,' warned another. 'We got it stitched up here. Move on, brother.'

Striking a defiant pose, the Doctor pushed the edge of stubborness as far as he dared.

'If Oobix isn't recruiting, who is?'

The mercenaries grumbled and complained, before a senior pointed north.

'Lyonesse. A good hundred and fifty klicks north. Dangerous travelling. There's a lot of old dangerous kit lying around there.'

'And warbugs,' added another.

'Thanks for the tip,' gushed the Doctor, leading Martha away to the north, gradually veering away to the north east after an hour.

"Warbugs" echoed in Martha's imagination. She only half-remembered what Doctor Ross described as the designer-diseases: neo-plague and bone-something. Bonerotter? Evidently the old biological agents of the twenty-first century hadn't been deadly enough, so these idiots had cooked up even worse micro-organisms to infect and kill each other with. The prospect of treading ground contaminated with such disease agents didn't fill her with glee.

'Doctor?' she tried, as her companion strode into and through the thinning jungle. A golden-plumed bird jumped, shrieking, at her from a bush, causing Martha to do a little shrieking of her own.

'Okay,' said the Doctor, stopping and giving the scared young woman a hug. 'Just protecting it's nest. Are you worried?'

Martha nodded, her throat sore at the sudden noise ripped out of it.

'Don't be. I had to concentrate very hard to pick up the TARDIS's whereabouts over the past few hours, which left little time to chit-chat. I've got the old girl now – only a few hours away.'

She visibly relaxed.

'It was the talk of diseases that worried me. Neo-plague and bonerotter.'

'Bone_rot_,' corrected the Doctor. He put a fatherly arm around her shoulder and began walking again. She might well worry. From what he remembered, the bonerot family of engineered bacteria turned human beings into flesh-coloured, immobile puddings with a life expectancy of minutes. Neo-plague killed slowly and painfully as the body haemorraghed apart. 'I think you'll find that the old banes of the twentieth – whoops, sorry! – the twenty-first century have been wiped out for the most part. Of course, a lot of new diseases have taken their place, or some old ones have mutated into new forms.'

The young woman's training and curiosity took first place, edging fear aside.

'What are the new ones, then?'

'Ah, now, their names are a bit lost to me. Not a medical doctor, didn't pay toooo much attention. Um. Clark-Kiffer Syndrome. That came to Earth from Barnard's Star. Makes you allergic to sunlight. What else can I recall? Palitosis, a mutation of the old Herpes Simplex. There was a whole strain of weird things that came out of the Vandellos meltdown – sorry, will come out of it, when it happens.' There were more vague description about other diseases, the Doctor apologising for not remembering all the necessary detail because, not being human, he wasn't threatened by them.

The realisation suddenly struck Martha that they'd been walking and chatting for a long time, that her curiosity had banished her fears and that the Doctor just had to have planned it that way. Feeling braver, she went for levity.

'Nothing that turns you into a vampire or a zombie?'

Rolling his eyes and tutting, the Doctor shook his head in mock despair.

'Hardly! You've been watching too many films. Aha! There we are!'

They stood at the edge of a shallow valley, crowned with trees that grew shorter and scrawnier the closer they got to the stream running the length of the valley bottom. Directly opposite at the treeline, standing out courtesy of it's blue paint, was the TARDIS.

Feeling a sense of relief, Martha would have merrily marched down and across the two-metre width of the stream if she hadn't been restrained by a hand on her arm.

'Don't like the look of that,' muttered the Doctor. 'Nope. Not a bit.' Instead of plunging into the sluggish and shallow waters, he looked around for a rock. When he found one the size of a car wheel, he lugged it to the bank and carefully rolled it into the stream. Despite taking such pains, there was a splash and he danced backward. Even as Martha watched, a droplet settled on the Doctor's boot and immediately the material began to smoke before he flicked his foot dry.

'Don't fall in,' he cautioned, jumping lightly onto and off the rock. Martha followed, feeling crestfallen that she'd been about to paddle in what seemed like a river of acid.

Typical Hargreave's Fall, she realised. Dangerous. Danger amidst the ordinary. The closing of the TARDIS doors behind her was a welcome, welcome sound.

'A river of acid,' she said to nobody in particular. 'Delightful.'

'I saw a whole ocean of it once, and it doesn't flow or reflect quite like water. Confirms my decision to travel by TARDIS. I think we've got enough local colour, and I don't want to risk your health coming across warbugs.'

In the mistaken belief that using the timeship for simple three-dimensional aeronautical travel would be quicker and more accurate than guessing the locations of Cormelle, the Doctor set off. His guileless assumption proved wrong when they were crossing the borders of Northcoping, although this point of cartographical interest remained unknown to both travellers.

'What are those?' asked Martha, pointing to the big external scanner, which showed a rushing green river of landscape flashing by beneath them. A series of glowing dots were rising up from scattered points down below, approaching very slowly to begin with, then accelerating to frightening speed.

A clattering sound, like thrown gravel, came over the scanner's external pickup.

'Anti-aircraft shells,' stated the Doctor as he chased himself around the time rotor, peering myopically at various rotor settings. 'Harmless. Ignore them.'

'Ignore them!' squeaked Martha, petrified. 'Harmless!' High adventure was one thing, dancing with high explosive was quite another and the TARDIS didn't have a layer of armour-plating.

The Doctor doffed his spectacles and looked at her inquiringly, then hit himself on the forehead with a palm.

'Aw, how could I forget to tell you! Sorry, Martha. I thought I'd told you. Must have been Rose. The TARDIS is indestructible. Programmable neutronium shell.'

The young woman looked around. She was in a time-travelling spacecraft from the other end of the universe, that was gigantic on the inside but the size of a wardrobe on the outside, which could (allegedly) transform into a semblance of any object. So why couldn't it be indestructible?

Privately, the Doctor realised why the _El Arish_ had set down where it did. The closer one got to Cormelle, the more advanced the polities became, which meant they had more sophisticated weapons to throw at unwary travellers.

Martha squinted at the scanner. The anti-aircraft shells had stopped. Now there was another glowing object racing up after them, trailing a long, feathery tail of smoke.

'Rockets, now.'

The Doctor nonchalantly spun a dial, causing the view to lurch as the TARDIS changed altitude and direction. The rocket changed course, too.

'A guided missile, Martha,' he said, slowly, not taking his eyes off it. The missile was gaining. Ten seconds or less –

'Martha! Is there a little red and yellow light blinking on the console?' he snapped.

'Um - ' she spluttered, looking all over the controls before noticing a madly winking light – alternate red and yellow. 'Yes. Why - '

'Grab hold of something solid! Don't ask, just do!'

She found a stanchion underneath the console deck with enough purchase to grab wildly before the scanner screen flared white, the external pickup abruptly died and a huge shudder traversed the timeship, bouncing both occupants wildly for the space of several heartbeats.

'What – what was that?'

Brushing his hair back into normality, the Doctor exhaled in relief.

'Doctor?'

'A nuclear-tipped anti-aircraft missile. About two hundred kiloton yield.' His tone was clipped and sharp, which Martha mistook at first for an after-reaction, fear or relief. 'Madness. Absolute insanity. Using a weapon like that would do more damage to your own people on the ground than it inflicted on your enemy.'

He stared at Martha, who stared back.

'Whatever it takes, Martha, we are going to find out how and why a whole planet has gone criminally insane.'

More practically, he brought the TARDIS down to treetop height, all the better to avoid detection or attack again.


	10. Chapter 10

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER TEN

The time-traveller's arrival at Cormelle had been heralded by the enormous nuclear fireball that erupted over the skies of Northcoping. The explosion was large enough and near enough to shake windowframes in dwellings at the nearer edge of the polity.

Thus, the TARDIS's descent onto a heliport pad didn't surprise the airport staff on duty, even if they had been utterly baffled by the radar returns, which alternated between an approaching mass equivalent to that of a small planetoid, and a one-man aircraft.

Both traveller's behaved differently when they departed from the ship. Martha strode around the big blue box, failing to find any trace of either impact or damage. The Doctor stood and looked around at the polity of Cormelle, recalling the very basic version he'd seen five hundred years and two bodies ago.

'Will you look at this,' he murmured, which Martha took as an instruction. 'No, sorry, I was just remembering my first visit here.'

'Don't tell me – "I remember when this was all fields"?' quoted the young woman, impishly.

'Fields, yes. Fields covered with spaceships and camps and robot equipment. Bounded by forests, too.'

If forests still existed beyond the city, it was impossible to see them thanks to the array of buildings that stood on all sides. Big, small, stone, tall, metal, plastic, every variety existed.

Currently, the most relevant building was the Air Control Terminal, from where a small electric three-wheeler came trundling over the hardstand towards them.

'Will they welcome us or shoot us?' wondered Martha aloud.

'They knew we were coming,' and the Doctor nodded southwards, where an ascending column of fire and smoke stood over the forests.

First man out of the small car wore a dark blue uniform with red braid. His colleagues had similar uniforms with yellow braiding, and holstered sidearms, too.

'Are you mad!' exclaimed Red Braid. 'Flying in over Northcoping!'

Shaking his head in bemusement, he handed a plastic stick to each of the travellers, careful to stay at arm's length while he did so.

'Disease detector?' guessed Martha. Red Braid nodded.

'Hold in your hand until I say let go. Really, you were asking for it, you know. I didn't realise the Norties still had nukes and you were lucky their guidance systems must be rubbished by now. Poor mad dastards. Thanks be to the Lords above that the prevailing winds are away from us, eh? Okay, let go and show me. Fine. No communicable diseases.'

Standing to attention, he saluted them both.

'Welcome to Cormelle polity. If you will follow me I'll lead you to the Refugee Processing Centre.'

A stern glance from the Doctor persuaded Martha not to protest at being categorised so.

The grandly-named Refugee Processing Centre turned out to be a big set of concrete sheds, with decontamination showers, changing cubicles, medical rooms and a small triage morgue. Both travellers had to surrender their uniforms for white boilersuits on the promise that the originals would be returned once cleansed of any contamination, radiation or contagion.

'Look after those trainers!' warned the Doctor. 'Chuck Converse. Priceless out here!'

Mister Red Braid apologised for being slightly-tongue tied at their arrival.

'It's years since we had anyone arrive in an aircraft. Oh, we use them ourselves but we know where to avoid. Really, you were extremely lucky.'

He seemed almost unhappy that they'd not been vapourised. He was also puzzled at their lack of any trace of passage to Cormelle.

'Can you please fill out these forms?'

Two of the intelligent plastic sheets familiar from the Red Star hospital were presented to them. After a minute of scrawling the official read back their entries, pausing to look upwards at the Doctor with a fierce glare.

'So you claim to be "The Doctor", eh?'

'Yup!' announced the Time Lord, rocking back on his heels.

The two silent escorts looked equally grim. Martha began to worry that an arrest was imminent. Instead, the official told them to follow him. He led the way across a hectare of grassed ground, past the far end of the helipad runway and beyond a large semi-cylindrical building with "Hospital" signs around it.

Beyond the yellow-striped emergency zone around the helipad runway, a small stone column that came to waist-height stood alone on a brick plinth. It didn't appear to have any specific function, and stood distant from the much larger structures on all sides.

'Wow – is that the old Number Sixteen?' asked the Doctor, shading his eyes from the twin suns and pointing at a rusty, stained, algae-greened tower surmounted by a copper-blue minaret, towering over an inspection pit. 'The original Power Tower?'

Expressions of utter astonishment crossed the faces of their escorts.

'How did you know that?' asked Red Braid. 'That building is five hundred years old! Oh, never mind. Get on with you.'

A hundred metres on brought them to the plinth. Made of chiselled stone, it bore a bright and shiny brass plaque that looked brand new.

"Dedicated to the memory of Roger Cormelle. Pioneer, visionary and founder of this settlement. We take his name in remembrance for this first permanent township of the first polity," read the Doctor.

'Look on the other side,' growled Red Braid. Martha walked round, since her companion was standing in contemplation, staring at the plaque.

There was another, smaller plaque on the opposite face of the column.

"Dedicated to The Doctor and Dorothy. True friends in a time of peril". Er – and there's an etching of an umbrella.'

The Doctor abruptly came out of his silent study.

' "Dorothy"?' he announced. 'It should read "Ace"! She'll hate that!'

'Read the date!' snapped Red Braid.

There was no need. It was embossed in silver plate. "2507".

'Four hundred and sixty seven years ago. So, whoever you are, you are _not_ The Doctor,' finished the official, triumphantly.

'Time machine. Different body. Still The Doctor. Knew Roger Cormelle first time around. Next question.'

Martha laughed out loud at the sheer incomprehension and incredulity displayed by the three escorts.

'That's Time Lord wit!' she warned them. 'Long in the tooth, sharp in the bite.'

'A blue box!' shouted one escort at the other two. 'A big blue box with POLICE written on it.'

'A stranger with a nubile female as accoutrement.'

Red Braid looked unsure. He looked back at the TARDIS, which remained a big blue box with POLICE written on it. He looked back at the man in front of him, wearing an air of amused contempt.

'I think we'll take you to see one of the Initiate,' he said quietly, with the manner of a man happily handing a hot potato to a third party.

Whoever or whatever the Initiate were, the Doctor was happy to see them. He drank in the surroundings, where busy people bustled about driving small electric trucks, or herded livestock. A significant number wore white boilersuits, clearly refugees. They acknowledged the party with cheery waves and greetings, happy to see fellow survivors who had made it to Cormelle.

A sanctuary, realised Martha. _That's_ why people tried to get to Cormelle, because it hadn't collapsed into chaos and warfare.

Why hasn't this city-state collapsed into anarchy and death? wondered the Doctor. What kept it an oasis of sense?

'You seem to have escaped The Breakdown and subsequent Effect almost completely,' he commented breezily. 'No destruction, no fighting, no insanity.'

Red Braid turned to look at him with a nasty expression.

'Come this way,' he snapped, altering course to lead them south across the flagstone plaza and towards a podium under permanent stressed-steel awnings. This structure stood well out into the plaza, away from the much bigger buildings. As their party approached, Martha could see another plaque affixed to the front of the podium: IN REMEMBRANCE. More writing lay below the larger text, which only became legible when they were within a few metres of the awning.

Red Braid indicated the plaque, which Martha read aloud.

' "This memorial marker is erected upon the mass graves that served to bury 10,000 citizens of the Cormelle polity after The Breakdown." '

The angry customs official snorted dismissively at The Doctor and they resumed their original course.

From what they could see as they walked, the central landing site of five hundred years ago had been extensively landscaped, re-surfaced and built upon until the only vestige of the original landing was the battered hulk of Number Sixteen. They were led to a long, low building with a great scalloped hallway that housed hundreds of seats arranged in a semi-circle around a central podium.

'Town hall?' guessed the Doctor. He got a tut from Red Braid. 'City hall, then?'

'The Meeting Hall. Back when we still had a civilisation to communicate with, we used to meet and decide matters that affected the whole polity.'

'Big talking shop full of hot air,' grumbled one of the escorts.

'Since you dislike this building, you can be the one to go fetch some Initiates. Not just one, at least three,' ordered Red Braid. 'Go on with you, be quick.'

Whilst waiting, the curious Time Lord took a long look around the interior of the Meeting Hall. Lots of wood used in it's construction, clearly jungle timber had been plentiful and free. At a guess, those wall panels acted to amplify sound, and so did the ceiling. Drapes hung over the windows to cut down on the twinned sunlight during noon.

Martha, being less analytical, sat impatiently on a well-worn bench and waited for the Initiates.

She didn't have long to wait. The escort returned with four strangers, two middle-aged men and two women, one hearty, red-faced and smiling, the other thin-lipped, dour and thin.

'Well met, strangers,' chorused the foursome. 'Are you hungry or thirsty?' asked the jolly woman, sounding worried about their state.

'Not really. Are we under arrest?'

The Cormellettes looked surprised.

'Arrest?'

'Under arrest?'

'An armed escort implies arrest,' continued the Doctor. Red Braid frowned, the two escorts looked at each other and the four Initiates shrugged.

'Er – "armed"?' enquired one escort. With a start, he unsnapped the hip holster and drew out a device that looked like the offspring of a revolver and a petrol pump. 'Oh, I see! You thought this was a weapon!'

A chorus of guffaws went up. The Doctor narrowed his eyes, rocking to and from on his heels, not enjoying being the butt of a joke.

'High-speed pneumatic injector. In case you were carrying diseases,' explained the escort.

'Why were you walking behind us, then?' asked Martha. 'Like police.'

The other escort spoke.

'It's not every day you meet people who claim to be five hundred years old.'

'Hey!' exclaimed Martha. 'Watch who you call old!'

The Initiates looked between themselves in astonishment for the second time in a minute.

'_Nine_ hundred, actually,' the Doctor sniffily informed them. The looks of astonishment remained as he explained who he was, who Martha was, and why they were present on Hargreave's Fall.

'This is – bizarre,' muttered one of the grey-haired men. 'It's common knowledge on the Fall that a person called "The Doctor" helped to get rid of IMC when the settlers landed on this very spot. So – you might be trying to cash in on that. Might you?'

The thin-lipped woman crossed her arms and cocked her head, non-verbal language that the Doctor interpreted as "I don't trust you".

'Let's go to the offices. More private and we have files that we can check.'

"Offices" described a barracks-like building which could have housed several hundred people. Originally, said the jolly woman ("Call me Grace"), it had indeed housed several hundred people: permanent accommodation for the settlers in lieu of the original tented encampments. Once the polity expanded outwards into cleared forest land, the workers moved out of the barracks to build individual hamlets and live there. A single barrack block had been kept to provide the Initiates with work space and offices.

They passed Number Sixteen again, closer this time, close enough to see the corroded surfaces, pitting, rusting and hung about with illegible signs.

'Bit unsafe, your atomic pile in a tin can,' remarked the Doctor.

'Tell me about it!' complained one of the men. 'Oh, I'm Marvon. Senior engineer. Normally I run the light industrial plant. That "Tin-can atomic pile" is impossible to dispose of.'

Without speaking, the Doctor raised an eyebrow.

'Not that we can't.'

Grace butted in.

'Nor should we! That building is the only remaining one from the original landing. It's historical.'

'It's a liability,' said Marvon. 'We've already had to cap it. In a decade or two it'll fall apart unless we dispose of it, and it's so hot inside you'd be dead in thirty minutes were you daft enough to climb in.'

' "Hot" in the sense of radioactive,' added the other man.

Whilst walking they dodged an electric cart towing a train of wheeled cages, each full of sheep. The driver, another white-boiler suit wearer, gave them a cheery wave.

'Glad you made it!' he called over his shoulder and out of the cab.

The Offices were now without most of their internal walls, featuring instead desks and dated, well-used computer systems with nameplates attached.

Lack of importation and limited specie for trade, guessed the Doctor of the IT on view. Another symptom of The Breakdown.

"NORA" stated the nameplate on the desk they were led to.

'Sit down,' ordered the thin, unsmiling Nora. Privately, she considered these two to be con-merchants, out to somehow squeeze a profit from both the Breakdown Effect and Cormelle if they possibly could. Quite how, she couldn't say. Choosing to pose as a character from the colonist's earliest history was clever; claiming that he travelled time was either outstandingly sly or spectacularly bad.

Yet, when she came to check the ancient files kept in an air-conditioned safe, they did include blurry pictures of a blue police box. Only a couple, then many more three-dimensional photos of the empty jungle border where the artefact had stood, taken from all angles. Fond of jungle photography, her ancestors.

For the original Doctor, with companion, she had more to go on. One of the treasured antique photograph albums bore the title "Landing and Early Days" and it contained what she remembered seeing many years ago. At the front of the album, one of those people present in a group photograph aboard the long, long defunct "Headquarters" had taken shots of both Doctor and Dorothy. That particular Doctor had been small, wearing a curious beige suit that featured red question-mark motifs, a multi-coloured waistcoat plus an umbrella that had a question-mark handle. Dorothy wore a skirt and leggings and a battered jacket, and carried a primitive sonic generator.

Nora swung the big, battered album around on her desktop and showed the incriminating photograph to the current claimant, who whipped a pair of spectacles onto his nose and peered closely.

Martha giggled at the picture.

'Did you lose a bet?' she asked, to a cool look from the Time Lord.

'Different body, different personality. Sorry, Nora, your point was?'

'To prove what I already knew - you look nothing like him!'

'Of course I don't. I already told you, that was me two bodies ago. Or would it be three?' Leaning forward, he tapped the group photo picture. 'That person there, the tall one, that was Dean. Very helpful, Dean. He took a trip with us to help sort out IMC.'

Nora jumped in her chair, then flipped forward several pages to a laminated sheet of typing . An inelegant scrawl at the bottom of the page might have been interpreted as "Dean". She knew the page well; it had been one of the most memorable articles she had ever read, describing briefly how Dean Lundy, a close associate of the legendary Roger Cormelle, took a trip in an incredible machine able to change shape and move in both time and space. He had to write the experience down, he said, since it was so fantastic that he'd probably rationalise it away as an hallucination within days.

Having taken the lead in the examination, Nora felt like a punctured balloon. Could this man actually _be_ the Doctor? With a shape-shifting machine to keep him company as he changed appearance himself.

'I can prove who we are with this,' declared Martha, holding up a key. This spoilt the Doctor's planned denoument in five minutes time, by which all the Initiates would be champing at the bit to find out who he really was.

The young woman departed with Grace and the two men. It took twenty minutes for them to return when it ought to have taken ten, if that.

'It's him,' stated Marvon, without any pause or prevarication. Nora looked ashen and opened her mouth to speak before Grace interrupted.

'Don't even think of arguing. He really _is_ the Doctor.' She looked at him. 'I'm so sorry we disbelieved you.'

Marvon sat heavily in a chair and remained silent. Even those not gifted with telepathy could see his mind struggling to accommodate the concept of an object being dimensionally transcendental.

The second man, hitherto un-named, spoke up.

'We were also rather graceless at your intent to try and help analyse the Breakdown. I wish you all the best.'

Beaming with all the manic intensity he could muster, the Doctor erupted upwards from his chair.

'No harm done! I take it we're free to roam around?'

Nora made a wordless gesture towards the door, signifying that they were free to roam.

'No escort?' asked Martha, a trifle acidly, getting her own back for being under suspicion.

Grace shook her head, with all the weariness of a woman who had been witness to something larger than life.

'No, dear. You just have a wander. If you need anything, ask someone to contact an Initiate and we'll sort it out.'

The Doctor offered his arm to Martha, who took it. Together they almost waltzed out of the tired Office building.

Once the door closed behind the two recent arrivals, Marvon walked over to check that they had gone and were out of earshot.

'Safely gone.'

Nora glared at Grace.

'Is that wise, inviting them to nosey around?'

Slumped in her chair, Grace didn't answer at first.

'I said - '

'I heard you, I heard you. Wise? We could hardly forbid him, could we? News that "The Doctor" has come back to Hargreaves Fall will be over the entire polity by nightfall. Any restrictions would make us look guilty straight away to the non-Initiates. Let me remind you we are still a minority.'

'Let them look. They'll not find anything,' said Marvon with assurance.

'Why should they suspect anything needs finding, after all?' finished the other man. 'Who could suspect Cormelle of anything?'

In an unconscious gesture that many Initiates had, Nora rubbed the back of her neck, up and down, over the old scar tissue.

'We need to make a report out for everyone involved. And we don't want any Breakdown while this Doctor is on the prowl.'

Marvon shrugged.

'Let's pray to the Lords above that the Norties stay quiet, then. Throwing nuclear warheads is a big step backwards and I'd rather not rely on good wishes to protect us.'

The Doctor casually looked backwards, and determined that they were out of earshot of the Offices. For the moment there were no passing herds of animals or busy little electric vehicles.

'Well, _something_ is rotten in the state of Denmark,' he remarked to Martha in a low voice.

'There is?'

'Oh, definitely. Quite what Cormelle has to do with The Breakdown is beyond me at the moment, but they're definitely guilty. Hands-in-the-cookie-jar guilty.'

For a mad moment Martha remembered the aphorism that Conan Doyle had created for Sherlock Holmes: when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. The Doctor seemed to have arrived at a truth and was looking to find impossible things to eliminate.

'I – how do you work that out?' she asked, genuinely curious.

'I'm a Time Lord. I travel time. I have a time-travelling spaceship. I travelled from their past into their future, a trip of five hundred years. They acknowledged all this, even Nora, who didn't see the TARDIS interior.'

One corner of the young woman's lip curved upwards as she recalled the blustering incredulity of the Initiates when they looked inside the TARDIS after she opened the external doors.

'Right, right: you travel time. Okay, I think we've established that point.'

The Doctor stopped and stared at her.

'Don't get cocky, Martha Jones. This polity is, in ways undetermined as yet, responsible for killing fifty million people and you and I are only two more potential victims if we don't tread carefully.'

Feeling like she had when (very occasionally) in the presence of her Principal, Martha chewed her lip and examined the gravelled ground at her feet. Entirely unexpectedly, a long, strong arm came round her shoulders and hugged her.

'I'm not yarking at you, Martha. I'd never forgive myself if my actions got you into mortal peril, and you came here because of me. Be careful, is what I'm saying. Well, actually it wasn't what I was saying but it is now. You're important. You matter.'

A lightness akin to butterflies in her cardiac system came over Martha as the Time Lord raised his eyebrows in an unspoken question.

'Um. Right. Okay,' she murmured. _Damn! Tongue-tied like a bashful schoolgirl_, she thought. _"Matter" in a general sense or "matter" closer to the heart?_ 'What, ah, makes you so sure about this lot being the guilty party?' she managed.

'Think back about your recent history. If a time-travelling stranger appeared in your midst, on the steps of Saint Martin in the Fields, what would you ask them?'

Unworthy replies about Lottery numbers or Oscar winners were banished from Martha's tongue.

'Stop – stop the Ghost Army, I suppose. The Cybermen, I mean, when they invaded. Stop them killing my cousin. Or the Sycorax, you could stop them. Heck, you could go back and stop Nine-Eleven, or the Gulf War, or SARS, or - '

'Correctamundo,' muttered the Doctor. 'Not that our hypothetical time-traveller necessarily would do any of those things, but it's human nature to ask. These "Initiates" didn't show the slightest interest in changing the past for the better.'

What might be described as a nasty, creeping, horripilation came over Martha. The oh-so-nice people here in Cormelle, all happy to see more new arrivals wearing white boilersuits, were responsible for a planet-wide catastrophe?

'There's more. Nowhere in our travels did we encounter any "hoppers".' Ace, five hundred years back, had been quite taken with the little creatures, which had an electrical encephalography similar to humans and consequently meant they were fearless and friendly with homo sapiens. That they seemed to be extinct hinted that the Doctor's dark imaginings were not groundless; anything affecting humans might also have affected the innocuous little creatures.

'I suggest we split up and cover more ground that way, Doctor. Meet back at the TARDIS when the first sun goes down.'

Rubbing his chin, the Doctor nodded.

'Remember to be careful. I have a slight degree of protection thanks to my history, but you don't.'

Contrary to the dark secrets the Doctor imagined the entire polity to be hiding, he found the locals helpful and friendly. There were lots of them, too; herding cattle and giant chickens, or driving little electric tractors towing harvested crops or lumber, or sitting shotgun on big, battered robotic landscaping plant – surely the descendants of the original automatic equipment landed five hundred years ago. One or two black-uniforms could be seen, patrolling paramilitaries who seemed to be police and army combined, albeit with an approachable air.

'Can we help?' asked one partner of such a pair.

'Are you really the Doctor?' asked the other.

'Yes and yes. First question, is there any need for people like yourselves? I notice you don't carry weapons.'

'Don't need them for police work. Don't need them for defence, either.'

'Not since the force barrier went up, at least.'

The Doctor stretched up to his full height on tiptoes, concealing his surprise at the description of a "force barrier". Did they mean a force-field? That would be an apatanachronism – an artefact or technology significantly in advance of it's normal timeline. No, not possible, the TARDIS had swept into and onto the helipad without so much as a whisper of obstruction.

'So people behave well in Cormelle?'

One of the police snorted.

'Course they do! The only punishment is being banished beyond the force barrier and nobody is stupid enough to want to suffer that, what with the brain-rot being out there.'

Brain-rot? Mused the Doctor. Is that what they believed? Before he could ask another question to clarify what the police, and by implication everyone in Cormelle also, believed, a thin, piping ullulation began to sound from the roof of a nearby light factory. Seconds later it was joined by another siren, then another, and another , and more, until a polyphonic chorus of sirens sounded from nearly every rooftop.

'Uh-oh. Not good,' snapped one of the police, looking at his watch. His partner went pale. Passers-by stopped dead and looked at each other in fear and alarm.


	11. Chapter 11

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Naturally, Martha made for the Hospital when she left the Doctor - professional interest.

This time the single receptionist was human, cheery and polite.

'Can I help?' she asked.

'Mm, perhaps,' began Martha, unsure how to phrase her request. She didn't have any official standing here, nor had she been responsible for helping stave off IMC all those centuries ago. After thinking of various approaches, she finally just went for the truth.

'I've come here from Netrosphere with The Doctor. We heard about The Breakdown and - '

'Yes! I heard he'd come back!' interrupted the receptionist excitedly. 'Sorry, do go on.'

'We're trying to investigate what causes the Breakdown Effect and I'm a medical student, about to take my finals, so I came here first because this is my specialism. Is there anyone I could talk to about it?'

The receptionist rolled her eyes.

'Only anyone living in Cormelle! You mean a surgeon?'

She checked her dull, scratched monitor, scrolling electronically down a list of names, times and duties.

'Nobody free at the moment. You could come back in a couple of hours, except the seniors don't like being disturbed at lunch. Oh! Silly me – we have a patient who's right up your street. Ian Brinklove. He's an archivist.'

Martha wrinkled her nose. Interview a patient? That didn't sit well with her training.

The receptionist winked.

'He's a man, you're young and pretty. Flutter your eyelashes, he'll chat to you. The Floor Matron might try and stop you, so don't let the old bag know what you're up to. Just visiting. Floor four.'

Ian Brinklove turned out to be a large, amiable man with a broken leg and wrist.

'Fell off a ladder in the library,' he explained to his new visitor. Martha looked at the gridded foil overlay that had been sealed onto his leg and wrist, with swathes of wiring plugged into mysterious electronic devices.

'Have you heard that The Doctor has returned?'

'Yes! It's most infuriating that I'm stuck in here, you know, because I'd be going over the old records from his first visit and seeing if they're all correct. A traveller in time, imagine that!' An expression of anguish passed over the patient's face. 'How sad he must feel, seeing what's happened here.'

A perfect opening. Martha plunged into an explanation of who she was, why she was here and how she wanted to help.

'You came to the right person,' said Ian proudly. 'Archivist, that's me. Ask me any question and if I don't know the answer, I'll find it out for you.'

Before he could say any more, a thin metallic wail began to sound from a point that must be directly overhead – the hospital's very roof. Within seconds other sirens joined in.

'What is it – an air raid?' asked Martha, feeling her flesh creep. She hated the sound of sirens!

'Nah. The wind must have shifted. Apparently the Norties let off a big nuke a couple of hours ago. The wind's shifted to the west and we're going to get the fall-out.'

For such serious news, the archivist didn't seem worried. He noticed Martha's unease.

'Don't worry, the hospital is specially sealed, permanently. There's shelters outside and every major building can seal itself in thirty seconds. Trust me, we had plenty of practice in this back at the start of the Breakdown.'

There was a rueful tone to his words that spoke of long, long practice.

'Attention staff and patients! The hospital is going to superdrive it's seal. Please stay away from the windows!' called a tall, thin, grey-haired woman that Martha instantly recognised as the Floor Matron. This hospital might be half a millenia advanced from the time she hailed from, but she recognised a matron when she saw one.

Superdriving, whatever that might be, caused the windows to darken.

Sinister, judged Martha: like the shades of night.

'Jelly baby?' offered the Doctor, picking a crumpled paper bag from one of his innumerable pockets and offering it to the policeman.

The officer looked at the striped black-and-white sweet in confusion

'Whoops! Sorry, Everton mint. You should try it, causes salivation, helps to combat oral dryness due to the body's stress response.'

Flicking a glance at his colleague, the officer gingerly accepted the boiled sweet and sucked it reluctantly, then with approval, then with gusto.

'Glucose, for energy,' added the Doctor. He fiddled with his sonic screwdriver and dropped a mint onto the ground, pointed his device at the sweet and pressed the "on" switch for half a second. A ghostly blue incandesence illuminated the dismal fall-out shelter as the boiled sweet surrendered up it's stored energy into visible light, hissing and spitting whilst menthol fumes picqued everyone's nostrils.

The surreal, dancing illumination showed a dozen people stuck in the shelter looking in awe at the Doctor, that legendary visitor from their past come back to sight-see in the present.

'There ought to be emergency lighting, but it's been so long since the last alert that I think it's stopped working,' explained one of the police officers. He pointed to a dingy metal grating visible at the apex of the shelter's ceiling.

This, of course, represented a challenge to the Doctor that he couldn't resist. Within a minute he had dismantled the light, stripped it, cleaned and removed corrosion and reassembled it. Anti-climactically, nothing happened when he tripped the switch over in a grimy corner.

'Patience!' he smiled, as the light gradually began to shine, brighter and brighter until it became almost uncomfortable to eyes adjusted to the gloom. 'There. Your ten-year service free of charge.'

The semi-cylindrical bunker that smelt dank and mouldy housed twelve people, not including himself, who had found cover when the warning sirens sounded. It had taken three of them a good minute to crank the shelter door closed thanks to rust and lack of lubrication. After half an hour of uncomfortable sitting in silence, a small green light set into the door changed to red, and a series of deep thuds could be felt and heard.

Which, reasoned the Doctor, must be sensor-tripped bolts locking the bunker door. They would only release when exterior fallout declined to safe levels. In other words, hours and hours spent locked inside a smelly concrete cylinder with a random collection of locals for company.

'Fancy a sing-song?' he asked, flippantly, to looks of incomprehension. 'Hmm. I'll take that as a "no", then.' Then, fishing for more information: 'Shame your force-field doesn't keep fall-out at bay.'

'Force-_barrier_. It only works on living things, mister,' piped up a young boy, huddled against a wall with his big sister. 'Flies or birds. Or people.'

One of the policemen, the one not sucking a mint, spoke up.

'We'd have been wiped out if we didn't have that barrier. Northcoping and Wardebeke _and _Unihampton all attacked us back in the early days. The barrier stopped them.'

This helped to fill in a little more background for the Time Lord. The nearest polities, more advanced than those established in later decades, would have access to higher technology and would have managed to destroy each other quite rapidly and effectively. So, after a few years of strife, they wouldn't have been able to sustain any attacks on each other or Cormelle. That explained why the shelter's door had been so difficult to close: disuse.

'Keeping any disease-bearing wildlife away has meant we don't get Breakdown effects here, too,' added another previously-silent bunker resident. A couple of others nodded sagely in agreement.

Interesting! mused the Doctor silently. More allusions to a disease agent. A disease-agent that the good Doctor Ross, back on Netrosphere, insisted could not exist.

'I thought that nobody's managed to find any germ that could create the Breakdown effect?' he asked, more to see people's physical reactions than to hear the details.

Several shrugs, a shake of the head, a weary smile or two.

'Simplest explanation that makes sense, for us,' said the first policeman. 'Maybe it really isn't a disease after all. Behaving as if it is keeps us safe.'

A distortion of Ockham's Razor, recognised the Doctor. A tool of logic, if one that didn't seem to sit properly here. The suspicion that – well, no, he'd do more digging around before concluding anything conspiratorial like _that_ idea.

'What causes the Breakdown?' replied Ian, taking a bite from an apple held in his left hand. 'There's a question! It changes every few years. "New research paradigm" is how they phrase it. I bet the rest of the polity don't notice, but I do. Archivist, you see. Let's see – currently it's down to settlement in previously unexplored areas of the southern continental landmass, where the hideous alien micro-organisms that cause the Breakdown effect in humans were encountered. Alien disease, humans have no immunity to it for the most part, pandemic results, Hargreave's Fall falls apart.'

He looked directly at Martha, then took a big bite out of the apple.

'About five years ago the consensus was that it was actually a war-bug that lunatics in one polity developed. It got out into the environment, infected the population at large and everything else results from that pandemic. Why someone would create a hell-weapon like that has never been explained, mind.'

Another bite of the apple.

'Going back even further, it used to be population pressure.'

'What?' interrupted Martha. ' "Population pressure"? There were fewer people here than live in the UK in my time!'

Ian shrugged.

'Population pressure for my recent ancestors, I should say, not population pressure the way it is for you on Earth. They used to move out from one polity to establish a new one when they disagreed with the politics, the religion, the city-planning or if they felt crowded. The Fall went from a population of ten thousand to seventy five million, and that was crowded for folk. Now, I didn't say I believed it, and it's not the current theory, before you look amazed at my stupidity.'

Martha remembered to blink in flirtatious manner. She wanted Ian to keep talking or that officious-looking Floor Matron might kick her out.

Ian finished the apple and tried to speak with his mouth full, then stopped to chew before carrying on.

'Mind you, they may have been right. Wong, which is the last polity ever settled and therefore the least-populated is the only other one apart from Cormelle that didn't go mad and get brain-rot.'

This was news to Martha. Ian, almost bursting with pride at his archivist skills and memory, informed her that yes, the Wong polity was also free from Breakdown effects. The reason it wasn't as well known a polity as Cormelle was because, again, it was the last polity settled and only maintained an existence at the ox-and-plough level. Given normal circumstances it would have developed it's own technology, or bought it in from neighbours when trade developed. Now, such a thing was impossible.

The archivist looked at the young woman with an acute stare.

'No, you can't go and visit. It's on the other side of the world and a sixty hour round trip by high-speed shuttle. Lords above only know how the Initiates managed to find it.'

'No radios?' guessed Martha. Ian nodded.

'Well, not originally. The Initiates left one with them in case of emergencies. Not sure how it'll work, since we don't have any working comsats any more.'

Martha snapped her fingers.

'Of course! You must be one of them – the Initiates, I mean.'

Ian stared at her, this time with alarm.

'Lords above, not me! No, no. Well-informed I am, alive I wish to remain. No, I am not one of the Initiate.'

That took Martha back. What were the Initiate if they weren't the people who ran Cormelle?

'There's two lots of 'em,' added Ian. 'The ones who used to run the polity before the state of emergency, and another lot who joined since then, over time. Everyone knows the first lot. The others – well, they seem to know each other, but I don't know how.'

Before she could ask yet another question, the Floor Matron finally got round to checking the visitor at Patient Brinklove's bedside, a visitor unfamiliar to her and yet who seemed to be interested in a long conversation with a convalescing patient.

With a promise to visit again and bring more fruit, Martha abandoned the bedside and boldly strode up to the Matron.

'Hi! I'm Martha Jones, here with The Doctor,' she said, trying to put a discreet emphasis on "The Doctor" to gain importance by association.

'This is a hospital. We have many doctors, plural, rather than a doctor, singular,' replied the Matron, in a brisk manner.

'Ooh – just remembered - I left a pan on the hob, 'bye,' trilled Martha, disappearing before she got taken to task.

The all-clear klaxon could be heard distinctly inside the smelly concrete bunker, a high-decibel warbling that startled the Doctor in that it came only a couple of hours after they'd taken shelter. With muted thuds, the door bolts retracted and the dozen refugees emerged into an oppressively humid, moist city thoroughfare.

Ah! Forced irrigation! realised the Doctor. Water was pumped to the top of each structure and allowed to wash any radioactive residuum into the gutters via spray heads and sprinkler systems, and sensor-triggered valves would keep the contaminated water separate from normal supplies. Given the humidity so much water had been sprayed into the atmosphere that even airborne particles of fall-out would have been flushed into the sewers. There must be a settling pond – lake, really, for a city this size – out in the middle distance where the run-off would be allowed to settle until it could be processed. What an elegant way to clean out contamination!

The first sun - Alpha, sometimes known as "Alf", acording to those in the bunker - had long set by this time, so he hitched a ride on a passing electric tractor, whose sunny-complexioned teenaged girl was immensely proud to be giving a lift to the Doctor.

He needn't have worried or hurried – Martha had been delayed by the fallout alert just as he had. Once inside the timeship, he donned glasses and dug out a packet of biscuits, then sat on his favourite Louis Quinze chair. Martha, recognising the signs of wishing to be left to work things out, made sandwiches.

Ten minutes later, as if emerging from deep water, the Time Lord shook himself and sniffed appreciatively.

'Cheese and cucumber,' mumbled Martha between bites. 'Find anything out?'

'A little more. The so-called "force-barrier" supposedly used to protect Cormelle sounds peculiar. It's not a force-field, whatever the locals might call it. I need to get out and inspect it.'

He gulped down the rest of the sandwiches, then looked apologetically at Martha.

'Sorry! Anyway, cucumber and cheese sandwiches need to be eaten quickly or the cheese gets soggy. Any news from your discreet investigations?'

She explained about meeting Ian Brinklove, city archivist. When she glossed over his descriptions of the differing ideas about what caused the Breakdown, the Doctor insisted she go back and recall the conversation in detail.

'Interesting. Interesting. You can definitely see the pattern of rumour dispersal across this community.'

'You can?' asked Martha, surprised.

'Definitely. This multiplicity of different ideas about a cause – aHA!' and he jumped upright from the chair. 'A viral meme! Oh, Martha, this is even more suspicious!'

After the savoury came the sweet. He produced his bag of Everton mints and offered Martha one.

The young student caught herself before asking the question. An infectious idea?

'All these ideas, all different, all changing every few years, are deliberately orchestrated and spread to prevent people ever actually wondering about the real cause of the Breakdown. Something is really skanky in Denmark.' He stared at his companion, who had delicately reached into the bag of confectionery. Gingerly she removed a small piece of paper that contained a badly-scrawled message.

"DONT TRUST ANYONE THINGS ARENT WHAT THEY SEEM WATCH YOUR BACK AND CHECK THE TEN THOUSAND" it read.

The Doctor blinked in surprise. There was no knowing when the warning had appeared, nor who had left it. Yet another indication of things awry.

He smacked fist into palm.

'This means we have to get out to that snidey barrier, to have a look-see. I have a feeling that the explanation begins there, wherever else it ends.'

After that stirring declamation, he returned to an intensive study of his 900-year diary and nothing that Martha said could get another word from him, unless you counted monosyllabic grunts as talking.

The young woman fell to thinking herself. If the people who ran Cormelle were really a two-faced collection of lying scumbags, what dirty little secrets could they be hiding?

And why?

What did they have to hide, what sinister developments could have happened here in Cormelle, and what set them apart from other polities?

As her professor back at Bart's would have wanted, and been impressed with, Martha reasoned logically: Cormelle had been the first settlement on Hargreave's Fall. It had been developed the longest. It's technology had therefore been developed to the highest level on the planet. Whatever the pinnacle of human development had been on Hargreaves Fall before the Breakdown Effect, it had been present in and at Cormelle.

If she had only known it, the Doctor was thinking along similar lines. His emphasis was along technological development. Cormelle was the most developed polity on the planet, having been settled at Year Zero. The pinnacle of technology ought to have been found in the polity, yet they seemed to have deliberately reverted to an agricultural-heavy operandum. Contrarily, you had Netrosphere, with it's culture of bazaaris and information-processing; or Ellenika, with the fantastically profitable bloodline brokerage industry. By now even war-wracked Herwald and her Dragoman militants would be exporting trillions of tonnes of mineral ores from the denuded southern hemispheres.

Yet here was Cormelle, sitting in bucolic isolation, alone amongst the polities.

'Look!' shouted Misha, pointing ahead. The excitement in his voice was easy to detect, and the reason for that emotion were towers visible over the thinning jungle canopy: Cormelle.

'Oh – Lizabet, Lizabet! We've made it!' cried Krisa, her shoulders slumping and tears running down her cheeks.

Lizabet stood still and stared. Correct, up to a point. Fourteeen of them had made it.

'We're not there yet. Don't relax, don't drop your guard, and don't get sloppy. Not now!'

Checking the chem-stick and the bio-tab, she moved forward. Daylight, now that Beta, the second sun was up, felt warm and cheering on her skin.

Please, please, let us make it, she pleaded to any supernatural being that might be paying attention. After all this, to get so close –

Artur, scouting ahead as ever, held up a hand and stopped. She gestured to the others to halt and tiptoed up to the scout.

He pointed at the ground. Sure enough, there were heel-and-toe footprints of the beast Misha had dubbed the "Stinking Fishbelly". As big as a man, bipedal, foul-smelling and carnivorous, she had never heard such a creature existed on the Fall, but since she had never travelled far before she wasn't the best-informed person. A mutant, or an off-world exotic, or a mercenary's pet, all were academic; the creatures had killed six of their party in nocturnal attacks. In turn, the refugees had killed two of the beasts, with stones, slingshots, makeshift spears and torches. After that they were stalked by the monsters but left alone.

Artur poked the footprint with his index finger, then looked left and right.

'Old footprints. Look how they run, from north to south. I think our Fishbelly was startled enough by that nuke to panic and run. Look – over there. Broken branches.'

Lizabet stood and looked down the trail their erstwhile stalkers had left.

'Okay everyone, keep close together. All-round watch. That unholy nuclear explosion didn't destroy Cormelle, we can see it's towers from here, in fact it may have scared those stalking Fishbellies away.'

Tempers abruptly improved. A few people shook hands and slapped backs.

'Don't relax!' warned Artur. 'We're not out of here yet.'

The last few miles were an anti-climax after the trauma of the months so far. The greenery surrounding them bore little resemblance to the blighted lands left far to the south. Normal animals and flora abounded. Twin suns, undimmed by mist, smoke or gasses, shone down with a kindly light, and the small party rounded the arm of an un-named stream they walked beside, past a stand of enormous pine trees and into full view of the Cormelle perimeter.

A semi-circle of flowers? wondered Lizabet at the sight of distant orchid-like stems and blossoms. They were spaced at what looked exactly like fifty metres apart – which is when she realised that the strange plants were actually sensors on a stand, oriented to look outwards across the land the pilgrims had been crossing.

Slowly, everyone came to a halt. They were suspicious of the strange devices, to say the least, especially after enduring the trial-by-ambush of so many weapons on the way here. Minutes ticked by without anything happening.

'I think they're just sensors,' opined Artur uncertainly. 'Detectors. Not weapons.'

That was the consensus amongst the pilgrims. The more apt question was _what_ they detected.

Looking for a ford, or bridge, they found a new plastic walkway laid over the stream at a narrow point and crossed over. And you could really call this a stream, fast-flowing water clear as crystal, where shoals of miniature fish darted into cover, utterly unlike the dead, turbid waters encountered so far.

'Look!' called one of the group, pointing at the towers. Then Lizabet realised they were pointing at a flying vehicle, a slow and bulky shuttle painted in white and blue livery, approaching slowly from the north-west and thus from Cormelle itself.

It didn't seem obviously armed. No guns, or weapon pods, nor bombs or missiles when she checked with the binoculars. In fact it seemed to be designed to be as unthreatening as possible.

'I think it's a – I don't know what to call it.'

'Welcoming committee?' said Artur.

Banking gently, the sluggish aircraft flew around them before settling on the ground in a huge flurry of dust and blown grasses. A door slid back, a ramp slid out and a group of men and women in braided uniforms marched down the ramp to cross the intervening ground. Worryingly, they carried weapons in holsters.

Their leader, wearing the distinctive flowing ankle-length uniform of a commander, marched up to the perimeter marked by the flower-like sensors whilst his fellow-soldiers struggled to keep up with him. He stopped suddenly, whipped out a pair of spectacles from a pocket, put them on and beamed at the pilgrims.

'Welcome!' he intoned heartily. 'Welcome to Cormelle! I'm The Doctor!'

After his greeting, the Time Lord winced, snapped his fingers, tutted loudly and turned back to the pilgrims.

'Ah! Stupid! Tactless! Didn't mean to imply that you're full of warbugs. Honorary title. These chaps here are the immigration service. Say hello, be polite, welcome your visitors why don't you?'

To begin with, the fourteen new arrivals goggled at the Doctor, all the more so after his introduction. The less ebullient immigration officials set up a portable table next to a crate containing white boilersuits, and erected a modesty-preserving windbreak.

Still the pilgrims didn't move. Feeling guilty and perhaps responsible for their reluctance to move, The Doctor eyed the perimeter of sensors curving away on either side of them in a gentle arc.

Hours earlier that morning after breakfast, he and Martha went to the nearest policeman, informing them that the travellers wished to visit the force-barrier, if that was okay, or did they need permission?

Not from the police. Immigration, on the other hand, were another matter. That same old humourless red-braided official from Air Traffic Control had informed the police that a new party of refugees were approaching the Cormelle perimeter and would arrive within hours. So, instead of having to walk all the countless kilometres to the force-barrier perimeter, both travellers got an airlift. Red-braid, still nameless, warned both of them not to cross the force-barrier under any circumstances.

'Certainly not,' the Doctor had replied, loftily and absently whilst looking out of a window. Martha recognised the tone – placating on the surface and meaning that the Time Lord would do exactly what he wanted regardless of warnings.

Now.

Extending a hand in the universal gesture for greeting, the Doctor stepped over the force-barrier perimeter and strode towards the refugees. He felt nothing when crossing over the barrier, apart from a certain guilty glee at the irate officials shouting at him from their seats at the portable table.

'Sorry if I scared you. I'm not a local myself, you see.'

'I'm Lizabet. Closest thing we have to a leader,' said a pale, worn, sharp-eyed young woman. She edged closer to the extended hand.

'Don't touch her! You don't know if she's infected!' called an official.

The Doctor leaned forward. He spoke so low that Lizabet strained to hear him.

'I'm going to shake your hand as an act of faith and also to annoy that little tinpot behind us.'

He shook the young woman's hand, then swung on his heel and indicated the waiting Cormellettes with a grand sweep of his arm.

'These people need to vet you and ensure you're not carrying any infections. Those worrying-looking "guns" are actually high-speed injectors with broad-spectrum vaccines and antibiotics. You'll need to surrender up your clothes for the sterile ones provided.'

Whispers of wonderment went around the little group. Acting as leader, the Doctor once more strode boldly back to the perimeter and crossed it, lifting his foot –

- or attempted to.

A foggy, nebulous horror welled up in his mind and chest, sending his stomach clenching, cramping his muscles and dizzying him nearly into imbalance. He tried to stay upright, reeling on the spot, shifting his balance around on his left foot as his right remained poised over the barrier, desperately trying not to collapse or fall backwards. Defying the shapeless panic and pressing on, he felt as if invisible waters were swirling all about him, pressing down with a dark and deadly weight: they crushed him with silent pressure, making his bones creak from either imagined terror or actual horror, choking the very breath out of him, chilling the life out of him, blinding him with their murky matter. Both suns paled whilst the sky darkened and the earth shook underfoot and tilted and rippled. The only way out was backwards, to flee in panic, retreat, it seemed – no! no, that wasn't true, he must press on -

- and his foot came down after the brief yet monumental struggle.

'Phew!' he breathed, in genuine relief. A warm, friendly pair of hands steadied him. 'Martha?'

'Doctor, are you okay? What happened?' asked the young woman. 'You stopped for a moment there.'

The customs officials laughed unsympathetically at him. Red braid indicated the shuttle with his thumb.

'They've turned it off now. Come on you lot, there's no risk now.'

Gingerly at first, then with increasing confidence, the pilgrims moved over the barrier and into the formal territory of Cormelle.

'Welcome to the independent polity of Cormelle. For reasons of health, we have to check your pathology and epidemiological record,' began Red Braid.

Recognising a pompous bore when she heard one, Martha tuned him out and gave the Doctor a quick, subtle series of checks that confirmed he was completely outside the parameters of human medicine, and hence healthy for a Time Lord.

'You were lucky, Doctor,' one of the official informed him in passing. 'That was the standard charge of two per cent. We keep it at that to prevent local wildlife from straying inside.'

Tilting his head back, the Doctor directed a searching look at his assistant.

'A moment? A split-second?'

'Mm-hm. You closed your eyes. Looked like you might fall.'

Two per cent! At that intensity his own senses told him he'd been straining to cross the barrier for maybe thirty seconds, at an intensity one-fiftieth of full strength. If that barrier were driven to full power it would most likely kill anyone trying to cross it, if they got within fifty metres without suffering a temporal lobe seizure or a classic Parkinsonian spasmodic collapse.

Yet for all the novel sensations suffered whilst crossing the barrier he had come across this type of technology before. A long, long time before, and a long way from here. The inventors of this technology couldn't have expected anyone with experience of it already to happen along and realise, with a sudden paradigm shift, part of the secret of Cormelle.

'Let's take a little stroll to look at orchids and butterflies,' he informed Martha.

Once they were out of earshot he took out his sonic screwdriver and set it to resonate at a particular infrasonic frequency, one that made Martha's fillings ache. Pointing across the stream at a straggling copse, he quietly warned her.

'At that setting it'll interfere with any eavesdropping equipment they put onto us from the shuttle.'

Martha raised an eyebrow.

'Being a bit paranoid now, aren't we!'

The Doctor didn't smile at her arch remark.

'Maybe not paranoid enough, since I know what that barrier is, and it's nothing to do with "force barrier" technology. Force barrier my eye and ninepence! As non-kosher as a roast suckling pig.'

Playing the pantomime, Martha pointed at the copse, too.

'I'm not up on Jewish cooking, Doctor – just tell me what you mean!'

'It's an empathic repulsor. I've encountered a similar large-scale one before.' He frowned in annoyance at his own erratic memory. 'Awfully large, awfully long time ago. With Victoria and Jamie, I think.'

Suddenly squatting, he pulled up strands of grass and inspected them closely. Martha sat carefully on the turf, checking for bugs first before settling down, craning her neck and watching the fourteen refugees being tested and re-dressed by the officials.

'An empathic repulsor. So – it repels people by acting on their emotions?' guessed Martha.

'Clever girl!' grinned her companion. 'Not quite. It broadcasts on specific wavelengths that affect the brain, usually the hypothalamus and the limbic system. The War Lords used it on their world to isolate and corrall about a hundred and fifty thousand human slaves, to keep them in a dozen different zones.'

Martha jerked her head round to look at the Doctor when he mentioned "hypothalamus".

'Oh my God!' she breathed. 'This could explain The Breakdown!'

Rolling his collected grasses into a frayed ball, the Doctor threw it overhand into the stream.

'Nowhere near enough power and reach. Sorry to spoil your theory. However, it can't be a simple coincidence and it explains another mysterious absence.'

Referring, of course, to the lack of manifest technology present in Cormelle. The polity's leaders had deliberately lied about the nature of the barrier that protected them, to their own citizens and to everyone else for the simple reason that suspicion about The Breakdown's cause would be laid at their feet. A device of this complexity and size didn't get assembled in a kitchen; it had been researched and tested and probably originated from a scale model. There had been a programme involving research into repulsors, which The Breakdown had managed to camouflage.

'D'you think you can do the Mata Hari bit again and pump your archivist boyfriend for more information?'


	12. Chapter 12

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER TWELVE

One partial answer to the questions that both travellers were chewing over came whilst flying in the big, slow shuttle now full of refugee passengers who could hardly believe that they had finally entered sanctuary, nor that they merited enough importance to get a flight back to the city-state. Metallic foil bags heat-sealed to prevent contamination lay behind a transparent cargo barrier, each bag holding the clothing and effects of a surviving refugee, all bound for chemical processing to ensure cleanliness and freedom from any infectious micro-organisms.

Looking pale and undernourished, the refugees exclaimed in wonder at the smoothness of the aerial taxi, stared out of the windows and exclaimed at the hectares of unspoilt wilderness interspersed with giant agricultural allotments. Looking out himself, the Doctor noticed a few fleeting structures overgrown with vines and matted grasses; for the most part, such ruins rarely disturbed the placid, bucolic landscape.

The jarring intrusions in this rural idyll were groups of other slow-flying shuttles flying almost wing-tip to wing-tip and spraying the land below with a drenching mist. One of the pilots came over the PA and explained that these were decontamination aircraft, spraying intelligent bonding agents to render harmless the fall-out from Northcoping's little excursion into madness. Rain and wind would move the bonded, inert powder into drainage channels and from there to the Great Northern Lake. The spraying ought to have taken place yesterday. They were out of practice, so it had taken an extra twenty-four hours to get the big initiative underway.

Ooh's and aah's came from the suitably impressed refugees. Red braid shook his head.

'Technology in Cormelle is strictly regulated and overseen. We've turned our backs on technical progress purely for it's own sake.'

Interesting! thought the Doctor, stroking his chin. Not true at all. Still interesting in how the myth has been established, and established deliberately, too.

Martha's posture altered slightly. Only a small movement of her shoulders, barely discernible to another person.

'How strange was it?' asked the Doctor. 'What you saw.'

The young woman's face turned back from the window. Even now, the Doctor could still astonish her.

'You said you can't read minds!'

'True. I can read parataxic muscle language, which is sometimes close to mind-reading. You were looking out of the porthole and saw the unusual.'

The young woman hesitated.

'I'm not really sure what I saw. A shadow. A thin circular shadow running through the countryside, miles across.'

Both continued to look out of the portholes until they were sweeping over the outskirts of Cormelle. No more shadowy circles appeared.

Since Martha failed to understand who Mata Hari was, nor what "doing a Mata Hari" involved, the Doctor tried "Veronica Mars" and "Hetty Wainthrop" until his companion's brow brightened.

'A teensy bit more subtle than spying,' he warned her. 'It's doubtful that the powers-that-be here will dare to kill us outright. However, please don't take risks.'

She did see fit to add a discreet touch of make-up, and to take along a paper bag with five apples that came out of the TARDIS fridge. No grapes, unfortunately.

When she trotted into the hospital's Reception a long queue of worried people had taken every available seat, leaving standing-room only.

Martha stood. Being a fit and active young person, she soon got bored with standing and began to stroll around the lobby, taking in the clean, if worn, fitments. She reasoned that must be a consequence of The Breakdown – no interplanetary trade to import new material, and no planetary neighbours to trade with. Against a background buzz of chatter that she slowly recognised as anxiety and fear, she consulted a schematic of the hospital wards and wings whilst half-listening to the crowd, who were uniformly present and worried about exposure to radiation or fallout, or both, and wanted to be seen and dosed with "Flourum" as quickly as possible, and their numbers caused "quickly" to be "slowly".

The floor plan didn't add up. Using her thumb, she measured off the different lengths of floorplans and realised that unless the hospital had a hollow centre, like a quadrangle, then a big area of the ground floor was not covered on the wallplan. The locals doubtless never gave the plan a first glance, let alone a second, since it was so much in plain sight.

One of those waiting was now protesting loudly at being delayed, drawing the attention of everyone in the lobby. Martha took advantage of this to steal a clipboard from the unwatched reception counter and saunter off into the hospital with it: looking official would be her camouflage, and her bag of apples would be the ice-breaker for Ian.

The archivist's face brightened immediately he saw Martha. There were no chairs to sit on so he smoothed a patch of bed and invited her to sit down. He fell greedily upon the apples and ate two in quick succession.

'Delicious!' he announced, licking his fingers with satisfaction. 'Sorry, I have to bolt them before the Matron comes round. Chilly cow's one of the Initiate, thinks she's too good for this world.'

'Glad you liked them. Now, perhaps you can return the favour.'

Ian made a face as if encountering a bad smell.

'I knew it. Pretty women don't fall at my feet unless for a reason. Go on, go on,' and he sighed theatrically.

'Don't worry, just that my friend wondered what kind of technology Cormelle was developing before The Breakdown.'

A small "oh" came from Ian.

'That's all? Not too hard. Those handy-dandy little electrically-powered vehicles, for one. What else, what else – oh, right, genetically-engineered fruit and cereal crops.' Seeing Martha's look of vague disappointment, he wagged a finger at her. 'I'll check back over my records, remotely. Come back tomorrow and I'll be able to give you more detail than you ever wanted.'

The more the Doctor pondered, the less happy he grew. He could project an air of unconcerned amusement if it suited him in company, to convince said company that things weren't completely up the creek. On his own, the twin demons of doubt and detachment gnawed at him: did he have the right to interfere in another culture, and if he did, what guarantee was there that the results would be beneficial?

Well, he dispelled the first demon with an aversion to genocide, however and whenever it was practiced. Nor could he make things worse than they already were. Two-thirds of the population were dead or in involuntary exile. Looking back to his Seventh incarnation, who had risked life and limb with Ace to prevent IMC from gutting the planet and enslaving the inhabitants, he felt that he'd invested enough to want to solve the problems here.

His major suspicion was that Cormelle had been independently developing empathic repulsors as a variety of weaponry. Of all the polities, Cormelle and only Cormelle, since the level of technology needed to develop the devices was impressively advanced and beyond any lesser polity. The reason for creating such an arsenal remained obscure. Answers lost in a past generation.

Very well, he knew how the polity repelled any attackers. Those dreadfully intense symptoms he'd suffered at the barrier – and with his non-human pathology, he didn't doubt he'd gotten off much lighter than a human being would have - would prevent any Breakdown-compelled victims from attacking Cormelle. Approaching vehicles might maintain an assault, but their occupants would die. Aircraft would fall from the sky, tanks would stall and nobody out in the open would get within spitting distance. Yet the rulers of the city-state – and who would that be, now, if their constitution lay suspended for the indefinite duration of this crisis? Doubtless the Initiates. Philanthropists one and all, bravely venturing forth into the war-torn wastelands beyond to rescue survivors, or blatant self-interest groups out to press surviving refugees into becoming mere hewers of wood and drawers of water? From what Martha said, the Initiates all recognised each other, but ordinary citizens only knew the pre-war public figures who had become Initiate once the State of Emergency was declared.

A personal reconnaisance. Venture beyond the barrier, check out the lands that had been ravaged by decades of strife, see what civilisation he could find out there (if any) and try to determine how that reflected his suspicions of Cormelle. They might have proof or evidence of the repulsor technology being used to create The Breakdown.

Digging into a capacious jacket pocket, he ferretted out a five and a half ounce Gunn and Moore, the leather darkened with sweat and grime, and began to bounce it off the TARDIS walls, careful not to let it hit the central console. For each throw and catch, he took a decision.

One: can't take Martha. Too dangerous.

Two: She can do a little research here.

Three: their Mysterious Note mentioned the mysterious Ten Thousand –

Four: - investigating which would keep Martha out of the way.

Five: Allow a day to travel beyond the barrier, a day to scout around and a day to return.

Six: Notify the Initiate, or notify whoever notified them. Be above board, throw them with sincerity.

Seven: Come back alive and informed. The trickiest bit of the job!

Martha wasn't gone long. When she returned it was to hear with dismay the Doctor's decision to explore without her, a decision he wouldn't budge on despite her wheedling.

'You'll have quite enough to deal with. I want you to investigate our hinted mystery about the "Ten Thousand" -'

'That's got to be the mass grave,' interrupted Martha.

'Yes. There must be a meaning to the message, beyond the obvious. I want you to find out what.'

'Okay. Oh, Ian said he'd dig up what the people here were investigating scientifically thirty years ago and let me know tomorrow. Do we have any more apples?'

A roving policeman he'd not encountered before proved to be the channel the Doctor needed. It had taken ten minutes of looking, asking any passing workers if they knew where a policeman could be found, until their paths crossed.

'Travelling outside the force-barrier?' repeated the incredulous officer. 'That's not a good idea!'

He felt strongly enough about it to commandeer a passing electric truck, taking the Doctor to what passed as Police HQ (low-rise, open-plan and low-key) and explaining to the other officers who were busy with administrative work.

Within minutes a small group of concerned officers gathered around the Time Lord, without exception concerned about his putting himself at risk and genuine about it, which flattered him. Their reasons were cogent: diseases, mass insanity beyond Cormelle's boundary, fall-out, booby-traps, hostile mercenaries, rumoured exotic wildlife, etcetera. Two civilians who came in to report on property damage and missing chickens also joined in the disapproving chorus.

'Any Initiates present?' asked the Doctor, already knowing the answer. Of course there weren't, or they'd have been encouraging the interfering busybody to get out of Cormelle soonest. 'Well, can you pass the message on to them that I'll be gone for three days. Look for me returning so you can switch the barrier off.'

He lied about having been dosed up by his personal medical assistant (Martha) with anti-radiation drugs, and broad spectrum vaccines and antibiotics, then had to politely refuse offers of weapons. These turned out to be nothing more sophisticated than machetes, which he might very well need travelling in thick vegetation. He seemed to remember from his earlier incarnation's visit that the jungle on Hargreave's Fall could grow thick, and accepted one of the big knives. Others insisted on giving him a map of the three nearest polities, with a warning that the information was out of date, and to avoid any large population centres. People would be dangerous, everywhere he went, with the exception of the Wong polity – half a planet away.

A policeman and one of the civilians insisted on giving him a ride to the edge of Cormelle's inner border, where the paved streets, metalled roads and walkways gave way to agricultural plantations and well-worn dirt tracks. Their obviously sincere concern for his well-being made the Time Lord feel that Cormelle wasn't completely corrupt; there was something worth saving here.

Waving a heartfelt goodbye, the electric cart's occupants buzzed back towards the towers and housing blocks of the city. Nearby workers in the fields looked at him with curiosity as he strode away.

'Right. Time to get moving, Doctor!' he told himself, and strode off in best fell-walker style. At first he made good progress until Alpha, the first sun, was joined by it's partner and he began to sweat.

Pacing! He reminded himself. Pace yourself. Another half hour and I'll get to that outcrop, lots of lovely shadowy shelter from Alf there.

The track he followed lay across fields now fallow, growing a thin layer of grasses and weeds where the rocky outcrop stood alone amongst hectares of level ground.

As he got closer, the Doctor realised he was looking at a structure, or the ruins of one. Not a feature of nature, rather the remains of a solid and blocky building four metres to a side, long overgrown with weeds and trailing creepers until the outline had softened into blurred obscurity. Too hefty and well-built for the farmers to destroy without a lot of high-explosives.

Sighing with relief, he ducked into the shadows cast by the ruin and crouched down to rest for ten minutes. Once he had cooled off, curiosity took over and he inspected the building properly, moving around all four sides and realising that it was one of the features standing out in the level landscape that he'd seen from the shuttle. Wrenching creepers from the side furthest away from Cormelle revealed tiling, and a metal plate rusted into unintelligibility. With judicious application of his sonic screwdriver, the corrosion flaked away and revealed a formal plaque, still corroded but now readable:

"YOU ARE NOW ENTERING THE POLITY OF CORMELLE

PRODUCE AND LIVESTOCK TO BE INSPECTED PASS TO LEFT OF COLUMN

TECHNICALLY CERTIFICATED EQUIPMENT MAY BE INSPECTED AT RANDOM

WEAPONS ARE NOT PERMITTED TO BE CARRIED BEYOND THIS POINT – ANY SUCH TO BE DEPOSITED WITH CUSTOMS ON PAIN OF IMMEDIATE EXPULSION IF NOT DONE SO"

What might have been metal doors were long since rusted shut, riddled with plantlife and impossible to open, so the Doctor went back to the other side of the column. Now knowing what he was looking for, he rapidly found a plaque on that face, too, and treated it to more sonic cleansing.

"YOU ARE NOW ENTERING THE POLITY OF WARDEBEKE

MEDICAL CERTIFICATION FOR LIVESTOCK MUST BE SHOWN WHEN DEMANDED

SHIELDING FOR ELECTRIC VEHICLES MUST BE RATED AT 80 OR MORE

PLEASE NOTE THAT NEUE VLEMISH IS STANDARD LEGAL LANGUAGE"

Nothing more than a glorified customs office, and a marker showing where the border between polities ran. Rather dull stuff –

That was how the Doctor began his thought, cutting it off when he realised that the current Cormelle border lay far further outwards now, kilometres away in fact, over where he and Martha had met the refugees.

'Crafty!' he told the defunct structure. 'Very crafty. Extending the boundary and increasing the size of your polity at the expense of others, thanks to The Breakdown. Now, is that merely taking advantage of the situation, or did you create it in the first place?'

The customs column remained mute. Another idea came to the Doctor and he scrambled up the side of the column, thanks to weather, weeds and erosion making convenient gaps for hand- and footholds. Once atop, he shaded his eyes from the twin glare of the suns now nearly overhead.

'Result!' he gloated, pleased at his own cleverness. The strange circular shadow that Martha described could be seen running off to the horizon on either side of the column, fainter than it had been from the height of the shuttle, yet clearly enough.

'More evidence,' he mused. That ring would mark where a previous empathic repulsor had lain in the ground, and perhaps still remained. Such a device would cause the vegetation above it to grow slightly differently from that elsewhere, creating a trace that would be visible from a vantage point, such as the customs column, or a travelling aircraft.

Making a death-defying leap from the five metre tall building, he set off again, this time looking out for other structures. The territory he now crossed had been part of the neighbouring polity of Wardebeke, and he remembered hearing that name in connection with past attacks on Cormelle. He came across a low, bunkerlike building later in the afternoon, took advantage of the shadow it offered and rested before moving on again. The structure retained a vaguely military look, if a bit forelorn thanks to the mosses and weeds growing on it. The narrow entranceway, almost completely blocked with earth and grasses, smelt unpleasantly musty and he decided against burrowing inside to inspect any further. Not far away, once he began to walk again, a rusted and corroded artillery piece sat in a small depression, on flattened, perished rubber tyres. Five gravestones nearby marked where the gun crew remained, and the whole area had been carefully avoided by farmers. Out of respect for the dead or fear of boobytraps? wondered the Doctor, deciding to miss the relic, too.

Still further on he crossed a series of shallow ditches and only realised that they were eroded trenches when his trainer snagged on a piece of rusty wire. Any action here had taken place a long time ago, long enough for the defences to collapse on themselves.

By the time he reached the virgin grasslands and copses at the limit of Cormelle's boundary and spotted the arc of sensors curving round over the landscape, the first sun had set and shadows were lengthening. In fact the coolness was welcome after such a long hot day, so he continued walking.

Despite steeling himself, there were no ill-effects when he crossed the "force-barrier".

'Ah. Of course. Unidirectional,' he muttered. 'Outwards only.'

Quite clever. Back during those obscenities that Gallifrey dubbed "The War Games" the effect had been present across both sides of their empathic barrier. Less intense than this version, too.

Doing mental arithmetic whilst looking for a bridge across a shallow, fast-running stream, the Doctor realised that Cormelle had trebled in size since The Breakdown. Again, was that cause or effect?

Consulting a hologrammatic map made him realise that full night would fall soon. This near the barrier there would be little risk of any hostile wildlife or people, not after years of repulsor operation, so he found soft ground in a copse of pine trees and dozed quietly for five hours.

False dawn woke him suddenly, from an uneasy dream about Victoria. Or had it been Zoe? The alien smell of the pines, which oozed an ichor smelling of ammonia, tweaked his nose.

Creakily, he stood and stretched, yawning, then checked his map and calculated distances. A few small townships lay within travelling distance – Sondeghem, Letterbeke and Vlissinghem. None looked to be bigger than say, ten thousand souls. If the general average across Cormelle held true, then each might retain three thousand people, and if one assumed a statistical immunity to the Breakdown effect of less than one per cent – the War Game victims had been immune to the tune of four or five per cent – over the three centres there might be almost a hundred people not victims of the incessant warfare and strife that had hit Hargreaves Fall.

Sondeghem was nearest, and took three hours to reach, over roads that were succumbing to intrusive plants and destructive erosion, despite having a semi-impervious plastic coating. Rusted hulks lay at the roadside, becoming more numerous the closer he got to the town. Odd ones contained rag-swaddled skeletons. At no point did he see any people, nor any signs that they had been there. No surviving dogs or cats – though he couldn't remember if the colonists had brought along dual-purpose domestics originally.

When he got nearer the town centre he realised why no people came to greet or chase him: there was no town centre. A crater big enough to take Saint Paul's and leave room for the Millenium Wheel occupied what would have been the central plaza and the buildings around for at least a square kilometre were flattened.

'Outrageous!' he muttered. 'Nuclear groundburst. At least fifty kilotonnes.'

The town had been built using locally-quarried stone, so the outskirts he stood amongst had suffered blast damage yet remained intact. Were there been any survivors?

Warily, the Doctor picked a low-rise house and entered where the front door had once been. Everything had decayed, rotted or fallen apart, even the hinges on a door leading to the cellar. Using his screwdriver for illumination, the Time Lord picked his way carefully down a flight of stone steps to the cellar and cast around.

More skeletons.

Except these ones were bizarrely compacted into grotesque little piles. Another angry retort rose to the Doctor's lips.

'Bonerot! So you killed anyone who survived your pocket nuke, eh? Monsters. Monsters!' he hissed, getting even angrier.

The chill of the cellar laid a cold hand on both his hearts. There was no risk of infection after so long, and radiation outside would have declined to acceptable levels, except possibly in the depths of the impact crater; no, this feeling came from the sheer folly of the killing undertaken here. Whoever destroyed this town and its people were monsters, yes; yet monsters deliberately created by Cormelle, not from their own volition.

Letterbeke took four hours to reach under both suns at their peak, and it was a hot and sweaty Doctor who surveyed the battered town from a scrawny patch of bushes.

'No nukes, then,' he muttered under his breath. 'That's good.'

There were rusted hulks in the streets here, too. These long-dead vehicles had been piled across streets deliberately to act as barricades instead of being left abandoned, which implied that people had survived long enough to begin erecting makeshift defences.

The town had been built in a radial pattern, with roads running from the centre along cardinal routes. The barricades sectioned off the innermost ring of buildings, which were in slightly better repair than Letterbeke's remaining buildings – once again implying that survivors had been able to keep their sanctum intact against the elements and other attackers.

However, despite watching for nearly an hour, there were no signs of life in Letterbeke visible through the telescope lens. No smoke, no movement, no people, no livestock, no vehicles.

With a feeling akin to despair, the lone traveller trudged down from the bushes and into town, where the only noises were echoes of his footsteps, a rattling window and a sombre wind.

A ghost-town. Peopled by ghosts.

'HELLO!' he yelled at the barricade.

_Hello-ello-ello_ came back in echoes.

Please let there be people in Vlissinghem! Some people must have survived! he pleaded to no particular entity. The first sun would have set by the time he got there, he calculated. In fact he made slightly better time thanks to another road protected by semi-impervious plastic. More promisingly, this road joined another that ran directly to Vlissinghem and that road was free from wrecked cars whilst the weeds were scarcely making cracks in the tough plastic coating. A closer look at them revealed what the Doctor hoped to see: evidence of herbivore consumption. This road was being grazed by livestock, perhaps to keep it clear or just to feed the animals.

Within half an hour of making this deduction he saw herds of sheep on the roadway and to either side of it. A quick look at his map showed the township to be only two kilometres away, concealed from direct view by rolling foothills that made fine grazing land.

'Now, there's the sheep. Where there's fire there's smoke, where there's birds there's blokes, where there's sheep there's shepherds.'

There were shepherds, plenty of them, all armed.

'Excellent!' beamed the Doctor, rubbing his hands and striding forth. 'Now to get arrested!'

Sitting quietly at his desk and dissecting an old computer core for cannibalisation, Marvon dropped his induction-driver on the floor and broke the delicate tool, causing him to swear long and loud.

'Mind your tongue,' chided Nora, coming back in from her check-up at the hospital. Marvon darted a bitter look at her.

'Don't start! That's the only one we had left. Back to manual screwdrivers from now on.' Half a dozen other Initiates left in the offices looked briefly over, saw it was only a minor spat and carried on with their own business.

Glumly, he picked up the intricate device and gently shook it. Ominous rattles came from the handle.

'More underlining our rejection of technology, then,' smirked Nora, pleased with herself.

No, corrected Marvon. More pleased with herself than she ought to be.

'What?' he asked. 'You came in here to tell me a juicy bit of gossip, didn't you!'

Nora sat down, her narrow face expressing barely-suppressed glee.

'The Doctor has done what we could only pray for – deliberately, without coercion, gone beyond the repulsor boundary!'

The engineer's brow darkened at her careless use of _that_ word.

'Oh alright, "force-barrier". He's gone beyond the force-barrier. We're all Initiate here, you worrywart. Back to The Doctor. He'll be gone beyond the barrier for a whole day.'

Without realising, Marvon rubbed the scar at the back of his neck. Gone beyond? That rendered the nosey, interfering rascal a potential victim to the Breakdown effect. A waste of talent, mind you.

'Bit of a waste of talent,' he pointed out. 'Clever man, The Doctor. I bet he could fix an induction-driver,' he added in an undertone.

Nora looked shocked.

'You're not thinking of Initiating him! _He's not one of us_!'

'That's not what I meant. I suppose you want to fire up the generator, send out another pulse?'

'Yes. I've checked the Fridge. We've got five on ice there, waiting to be Initiated.'

Marvon checked his desk diary, then pressed the randomiser button on his aged desk calculator.

'Okay. Five past eleven tomorrow morning, before first noon. Let's see how investigative our friend is with a head full of scrambled egg for brains, eh!'


	13. Chapter 13

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Martha would later describe her day as being one of "ups and downs", understating enormously.

Her first "up" came thanks to the Doctor's decision to entrust her with his much-prized and precious Psychic Paper. Where he was going, it wouldn't be much use.

'What if I don't believe in psychic stuff – will it still work?' she'd asked, every inch the matter-of-fact medical student.

'Pish. Calling it an Applied Pareidolaic Projecting Phosphor Thin-Film Sandwich is a bit of a mouthful, isn't it?' and he'd playfully ruffled her hair before pointing a finger sternly. 'Look after it, and yourself. See you in three days.'

The TARDIS, according to the Doctor, had a garden hidden deep within it's less-explored levels. Martha didn't want to spend hours wending her way through the labyrinthine corridors so she settled for a handful of grapes and strawberries from the fridge. No apples today.

She let her mentor get well underway before setting out for the hospital building, because visiting hours seemed to be a carry-over from the twenty-first century, even if nothing else was. Ian ought to have dug up information about Cormelle's technological heritage, for whatever worth that might be. On the way there she headed over to the memorial awning and checked the official plaque. Yes, it mentioned The Breakdown, as if that had been responsible for killing all ten thousand victims. Yet how could that be true, if Cormelle was the source of the lethal effect?

Wandering slowly back to the hospital, Martha pondered over the contradiction.

A chilling possibility struck her.

What if Cormelle really had created The Breakdown effect, and then wanted to pretend they were just as much a victim as anyone else – and so allowed ten thousand of their own citizens to die from radiation poisoning, or warbugs, or bombs or missiles. That would instantly end any criticism from outside agencies like Red Star, and quell any suspicions, too. Poor, brave Cormelle, the saintly sanctuary. Whoever left that anonymous note in the bag of sweets suspected the truth, too. Well, that was another item on the agenda she could ask Ian about.

Today there were far fewer panicky people waiting in the reception area so there was no chance of slipping past the receptionist, who caught Martha's eye.

'Back again? He must feel flattered.'

'Can't stay away!' smiled Martha, with sugary insincerity.

Once she had taken the lift, the receptionist called Floor Four.

'Floor Matron? Yes, she's back. Just gone up in the lift.'

Martha's first "down" was the absence of Ian Brinklove. She knew exactly where his bed was on the floor-sized ward, and there it lay, empty of any patient. No machines left next to it, no intelligent paper clipped to the end of the bed, nothing at all on the small bedside cabinet. When the young woman turned to leave and ask if her acquaintance had been discharged, the chilly Floor Matron intercepted her.

'What do you want?' asked the older woman, bluntly.

'I came to see Ian. The patient in that bed,' replied Martha, remaining good-natured with an effort.

'He's had a relapse. In isolation in the High-Maintenance Suite.'

Demonstrating considerable cunning that she had developed over her journeying with The Doctor,

Martha didn't respond the way a final-year medical student would have done, with strained incredulity.

"_High-Maintenance Suite" must be their equivalent of Intensive Care. Intensive Care for a nearly-healed broken arm! I don't think so!_ she mused rapidly.

'Oh, dear. Can you pass these on to him? Tell him I came to visit, won't you?'

Wordlessly, the Floor Matron took the carton of fresh fruit. She called over a white-boiler suited cleaner and passed them the carton.

'Kitchen. Fridge,' she instructed.

'When will he be released?' asked Martha winningly (she hoped). The Floor Matron gave a small twitch, which a less-observant person might not have noticed.

'Not for at least two days. Check with Reception before you come up again.'

Cue realistic sigh from Martha. She dropped her shoulders a little, going for reluctance.

'Okay. See you in a few days.'

Once in the lift she checked the different buttons for different floors. "High Maintenance" was on the ground floor, so she punched that button.

Only checking it out, she mused. Only checking. If Ian was in there she might be able to see him still –

Sadly, that was not to be. The HM Suite had complex security locks on the airlock allowing access only to those staff who possessed special electronic keys.

Martha muttered a curse under her breath. A "down" moment.

_If the Doctor were here, a quick blast from his sonic wonder gadget would open up these doors_.

She re-entered the lift before any staff could challenge her.

I'm here in the hospital now. How the heck can I redeem myself – I can't scuttle off unsuccessfully without managing anything. The Doctor would have been in there and found Ian and solved the whole problem five minutes ago.

Aha. What's this floor button? "Records & Data".

In the middle of a long and boring day standing sentry in front of the entrance barrier to Records and Data, Wonfro didn't expect any excitement, company or human interaction. His brief, as told to him at length by the senior surgical staff, was to permit only-those-permitted into that particular part of the hospital.

Personal information, he had been warned. Data protection. Potentially incriminating details available to those doing research. Not to be released to the general population. Secret, private and not to be accessed!

Those-Permitted very rarely came into this part of the second floor. In his twelve weeks duty so far, he'd encountered the Chief Surgeon twice and the head of Anaesthetics once. Both had sternly warned him about unauthorised access. Given that Wonfro, as a refugee from Unihampton, stood to be thrown beyond the boundary of Cormelle if he ever broke the law, he took very particular notice of the warnings.

So. Here was a young, pretty black woman with a big smile, explaining how she needed access to Records and Data.

'Thesis research,' she said, showing him a Red Star permit with the signature of the Chief Surgeon. 'Pandemic dispersion and the epidemiology of neuro-transmitted pseudo-prion agents.'

Wonfro, whose greatest academic achievement had been learning his five times table, gaped at her with complete incomprehension.

'Epidemics. Disease. Take-me-to-your-leader.'

Now, the tone of that he understood. Mocking. Still, that really was the Chief Surgeon's signature. The Chief Surgeon's signature carried a lot of clout with Wonfro.

'You can go and look at the records. Do not attempt to take material beyond this barrier.'

Martha almost skipped into the restricted area, impressed at how easy it had been to fool the big, stern security guard with the Doctor's Psychic Paper. Definitely an "up". Her major worry had been how to read the data, which might have been housed in arcane and unfathomable high-tec equipment. In fact it seemed to be a worn and weary version of the equipment Doctor Ross had demonstrated on Netrosphere – another "up" since it only took a few minutes to work out how to operate the readers and monitors.

Then it came down to reviewing dates and titles. Rank upon rank of drawers containing medical information had been filed alphabetically by subject matter, so she thought carefully about what to scan. "Breakdown Effect" had no entries, surprise surprise, so she checked "Artificial Disease Agents ("Warbugs"), "Fallout" and "Radiation". There were multiple data cores for all these entries, neat bundles of the pencil-thick artefacts that she sorted and checked one by one.

Slow work. Noon came and went, and she regretted passing on that fresh fruit to the Floor Matron, who would probably have had them binned the instant Martha turned her back.

After compiling data, cross-referencing and checking backwards and forwards, Martha revised her original theory about the Initiate allowing ten thousand citizens to die in order to appear blameless. For a start, the phrase "Initiate" didn't turn up before the Breakdown Effect began, nor for almost a year later in the records she had scanned. Again, from those records where personal, emotive descriptions were entered into the official data, she knew that the over-stretched medical staff in this hospital had worked themselves senseless to try and cope with the infected and the irradiated. Without their heroic efforts the death toll could easily have been tripled, and not a few of those ten thousand dead were doctors or nurses who had tended to the infected in the full knowledge that vaccines and antibiotics might not be created fast enough to enable them to survive. Martha felt a sense of guilt at her trawling with the pre-conception of They Were Guilty; as a medical student who'd hopefully be taking the Hippocratic Oath soon, she only hoped that she would be as dedicated in similar circumstances.

The data appendices were revealing; she'd long learnt to look at these in research papers when writing up assignments back on Earth, since they frequently revealed important details not implicit in the main text. Here the appendices showed death tolls tabulated on a daily, weekly and monthly basis, broken down by cause. The infected and the irradiated covered nearly all of these, with a few dozen people succumbing to mental collapse – covered in a sub-appendix dealing with Suicides; the insane were notable by their absence.

There were no cases of the Breakdown Effect in Cormelle, at all. Just over eight thousand had died from various diseases, just under two thousand from the effects of fallout and irradiation.

'And just what the hell do you think you're doing!' barked a male voice from nearby, causing Martha to jump upright and scatter the data cores over the monitor. A couple of cleaners down the hall stopped their work to take a voyeuristic interest in the loud arrival.

'Oh! Hello!' she blustered. 'I was just looking - '

The new arrival, a doctor wearing surgical goggles, a digital stethoscope and various electronic gadgetry, darting a look of thunder at the security guard, raised the entrance barrier and jerked his thumb at Martha.

'Get out of there immediately! That is private, privileged information and you have no right to even touch it, let alone look at it!'

'I'm sorry sir, she tricked me, she had your signature on a Red Star card,' said the guard, pathetically.

'I'm a medical student and wanted to see how - ' began Martha.

'My signature!' snapped the doctor, getting even angrier. 'I think not! Forgery as well as trespass! Wonfro, bring her along!'

The security guard grabbed her right bicep in a grip nothing less than a crowbar could have freed.

'Yes sir, sorry sir,' he babbled. 'You won't expel me, sir, will you?'

Martha felt a pang of pity for the big, slow man.

'Let us hope not, Wonfro. You, madame, I am going to incarcerate until I call my fellow Initiates.'

They stalked down one corridor, then another, and then off in a side-passage. A large cupboard stood at the far end, which proved to be empty when opened. Martha dreaded yet expected what came next.

'You will be locked in here, young lady - note that there are ventilation holes, which will also provide light. Your internment will be brief. The Initiates will decide what punishment to inflict on you. '

Wonfro pushed her against the rear of the cupboard, firmly but not painfully. The doors were closed and the lock clacked shut.

Another "down".

'I'm sorry, Mister Zollern, she really did have your signature - ' the guard apologised again, his voice becoming rapidly fainter as he moved away.

Her straitened circumstance didn't impact upon Martha with all the force it might have done, since she recognised, with stomach-flipping certainty, the name of "Zollern". A junior intern called Zollern had written up several of the reports she'd been reading as well as featuring in more of them, a doctor who risked his life regularly, and who had escaped death only by hours when a new vaccine to combat para-leprosy had been produced.

Yet now he was part of the whole cabal who had, presumably, profitted from the Breakdown.

She shook her head in despair. What was going on here!

Pushing at the cupboard doors, even with her back braced against the rear wall and using both legs, didn't make any impression at all. The big container was sturdy and securely fixed to the floor – it didn't rock at all when she threw her weight against the sides.

Like a rat in a trap, or a fish in a barrel, she concluded miserably.

Outside, a shadow fell across the ventilation louvre. Martha froze in alarm, before becoming curious; whoever had approached had done so silently.

'Are you in there?' asked a stranger's voice.

'Yes – I got – er, I got trapped, by the ah, door closing when I climbed in to get -' floundered Martha.

With a squeal of protesting metal, the left-hand door was prised open by the plastic handle of a mop, which was withdrawn and replaced by a pair of hands, which grabbed the door and physically unseated it.

Blinking in the bright lights of the corridor, Martha saw a cleaner, wearing one of the ubiquitous white boilersuits. He carried another boilersuit under his arm, before dropping it at Martha's feet.

'You'd better put that on, and quickly. Doctor Zed and his monkey will be back soon.'

She hurriedly put it on over the top of her clothes.

'Come on, let's put a bit of distance between us and the scene of the crime.'

He led her off, after picking up his bucket and mop. They crossed over more corridors, went up a flight of stairs and stopped to get a second mop from a supply room. The stranger gave her the mop.

'With that suit and this, you become invisible.' There was a touch of bitterness in the tone, and he made a strange gesture with his right hand - Martha realised instantly who he was.

'I know - ' she began, before he raised a hand.

'Save it, we need to get out with the shift change. Follow me. Any questions, you just came in from Unihampton and don't know anything about anything, but you're_ soo _grateful to be here.'

Martha's escape went without a hitch. She followed the stranger – well, no, she knew his name now – and joined a group of other workers in white, who left in a crowd, chatting and joking.

They both sat in the shade of the Memorial to the Ten Thousand, where Martha first introduced herself, then surprised her rescuer.

'You're Spiros Vendrakos.'

He blinked owlishly.

'Very good! Not psychic, are you?'

'No. I've met your brother. He did that same thing with the hand that you did.'

The young man looked with suspicion at his hand.

'Yeah. They say it dates back to the Hellenic Republic. Prayer beads. Which brother? - I have six.'

'Petros.'

Spiros went visibly pale and swore in what sounded like Greek.

'Blood of the Virgin!' he muttered. 'I think I'd rather face up to the Breakdown Effect than _him_.'

'He looked the business,' agreed Martha. 'Camo's, knife, laser eye.'

'Laser eye? He doesn't need one, he can see through walls anyway.'

Obviously little brother was scared of big brother.

'Don't think I'm not grateful, but why did you get me out of that cupboard and the hospital?'

He looked at her calmly.

'The same reason you were snooping in Records. Cormelle is rotten to the core. I don't know the how or why but those arrogant Initiates run the place. No government – "suspended for the duration". If you ask questions you disappear. Literally.'

'Did you write that note the Doctor found?'

'Um? Note? No, that wasn't me. Someone else suspects, too, then.'

With a little careful questioning, Martha found out that Spiros had arrived in Cormelle months before, after rapidly deciding the company of mercenaries and lunatics wasn't conducive to long life. Once in, he didn't dare to leave and risk getting his brains fried. He'd come in with two other ex-mercenaries, both of whom were rash enough to wonder about the white boilersuited minions doing all the menial work. Then, one day, they were gone, with nobody knowing anything. Spiros remained tight-lipped and at liberty. As a cleaner he'd tried to gain access to hospital records, being balked every time, so he felt impressed at Martha's diligence in doing hours of research there. As to his cynical description of Cormelle, it came from his perspective. He wasn't a homeless refugee pathetically grateful to be allowed into the city-state, unwilling to ask any awkward questions; nor was he a local who'd grown up in Cormelle and who accepted the status quo without any questions, either. What he did see were refugees being used for the menial work, anything dirty or physical or unpleasant

She shared her discovery.

'This memorial - ' and she waved her hands at the awning overhead ' – is a fraud, too. Nobody in Cormelle died from the Breakdown Effect, only from disease and radiation.'

'Then they did create the Breakdown! I knew it. Evil swine.'

'Probably. And I bet I know where they have all their Breakdown stuff hidden. Power Tower.'

Once again Spiros blinked.

'That junker! It's falling apart, and radioactive enough to poach eggs on.'

Martha wagged a finger.

'Says who? On what proof? Where better to hide all your nefarious gadgets than a place nobody in their right mind would try to get into.'

Spiros sat and pondered the truth of that.

'Then there's the floor-plan - ' began Martha.

'Already ahead of you there,' interrupted Spiros. His various cleaning duties allowed him to work out that an area equal in size to High Maintenance lay beyond that particular area, only accessible from that area, unmarked on any floor plans.

Both had the same question in mind: what was being hidden within the hospital?

'It's got to be something nasty,' mused Spiros. 'Or else why hide it, and keep it impossible to access. I bet they have another secure entry system for the secret chamber.'

'No other way in?' clarified Martha. Spiros did that gesture with his hand again.

'None at all. Not even ventilation or air-conditioning grilles.'

Martha sucked her teeth and thought aloud.

'You wouldn't get away with that at Guys. Health and Safety would have kittens. What if there was a fire?'

Spiros blinked in that way he had when surprised.

'Oho. I like the way you think, Martha Jones. What an idiot I've been! Pushing a mop around the corners of High Maintenance for months when all I needed to do -'

Light dawned on Martha.

'Was set off the fire-alarm system.' She grinned a wicked grin. 'Cool!'

The concept was easy. Carrying it out was, inevitably, far harder. For one thing, Martha found that her conscience wouldn't allow Spiros to simply torch the hospital, which the Ellenikan suggested in a flippant manner that might mean he was joking, or being matter-of-fact serious. They finally settled on sabotage involving flammable liquid; several of the cleaning agents used daily by the hygiene staff in small amounts on plastic fascias were highly combustible. Spiros had easy access to litres of the stuff, which he poured into the bottom of his mop bucket. Since the inorganic cleaning fluids were immiscible with water, he then poured water over the top and carried his petard around the hospital openly.

Martha had worried about being detected by the hospital's security staff, or the receptionist, or that prickly Doctor Zollern, but found that her camouflage-in-plain-sight white boilersuit rendered her less than noticeable in the crowd of other cleaners when their shift started. With a white fatigue-cap covering her locks, she blended in effortlessly.

8:15 am.

A hideous wailing began to echo around the hospital, the demented whooping of a crane amplified to insanity and overlaid with the shrieking of distressed babies -

_Wow! That would empty Guy's in seconds flat! Props to the sound-effects people_.

Martha lurked, in what would be irony made concrete, within the cupboard she had been unkindly thrown the day before. The skull-rattling noise of the fire alarm made thinking difficult. Still, 8:15 had been the pre-arranged time for the alarm to be triggered, so she waited patiently.

_One hundred and twenty seven thousand, one hundred and twenty eight thousand –_

'Ready or not, here I come,' she muttered, levering the cupboard door open. By now the staff should have moved any non-mobile patient out of their wards and, either by lift or stairs, out to the apron outside.

Hopefully! After all, she was a twenty-first century medical student adrift a thousand years into the future, guessing at how a hospital dealt with emergencies based on her experiences of –

A silently-signalling cleaner on the ground floor turned out to be Spiros. She jogged over to him.

'Brilliant! Emptied cleaner than a whistle. Let's get over to High Maintenance, eh?'

Martha's heart sank when they reached the electronically-controlled airlock of High Maintenance. The massive door seemed to be closed. Spiros insisted that they take a closer look, and his insistence was borne out when they looked closely: a centimetre-wide gap existed between the door and it's frame. Neither were to know, but the last person to leave had given the weighty door too hard a push, causing it to recoil from it's seat in the jamb.

'Step into my parlour,' murmured Martha.

They strode into the airlock, which took a full minute to cycle, bathing them in actinic light that hurt the eyes and made exposed skin tingle. Sterilisation, realised the young woman: you couldn't risk vulnerable patients getting hit with micro-organisms brought in from outside.

The lighting in High Maintenance was blue and dim, giving a chilly effect that contrasted strangely with the warm air. Six of the sculpted orthogonal beds lay empty, covers ruffled and their privacy screens collapsed. A couple of monitors, standing lonely by the bedsides, proved that there had been people in the ward.

Spiros pointed to the rear of the suite. Another locked door. This one stood solidly closed, without a handle, controlled by an electronic scanner set into the wall alongside.

'No sign. Could be anything in there.'

Martha studied the scanner.

'Iris recognition, I bet,' added Spiros. 'I'll get something to break it down.'

'We don't have time. That fire will only keep the staff away for ten minutes at most, and we've used five up already.'

Inspiration or desperation prompted Martha. She pulled the Psychic Paper from her pocket and pressed it over the scanner, grateful that Doctor Zollern hadn't bothered to look for it.

'What do you - ' began Spiros, stopping as the door's bolts retracted with a loud _clack_ and it swung open.

The room beyond lay in darkness until overhead flourescents flickered into fitful life. Cabinets the size and shape of coffins with clear lids lay around the walls. Most were empty; half a dozen contained vague shapes that might have been people.

Unwillingly, Martha moved to examine the nearest occupied box, then drew her breath in sharply.

'People?' wondered Spiros aloud. 'These are suspended-animation cabinets. Deep-space travellers use them.' He looked at Martha. 'Why stick people in them? And why all the secrecy.'

Martha pointed at the cabinet in front of her.

'I know this man – I know him! Ian Brinklove. The Floor Matron said he'd had a relapse and was in High Maintenance. I knew she was lying.'

The young man took a hasty look at the grey, waxy features of the archivist, then rapidly checked other cabinets.

'Holy Mother!' he exhaled. 'Don and Briggy – the mercs I told you about. "Moved on"!'

'Time to get gone,' warned Martha. She ushered Spiros out and closed the door behind them. Once they were out of High Maintenance they closed that door, too. Let the secret room stay supposedly secret.

Later, having made a definite last exit from the hospital, Martha sat next to her companion and pondered.

Ian had been trying to find out what technology Cormelle had been researching before The Breakdown. Whatever research that had been threatened to reveal secrets that the Initiate couldn't afford to have as common knowledge. So – they froze Ian. Stuck out of the way in a cabinet.

Well, that only worked for the short-term. He had friends and family who'd come looking for him, asking questions.

She sighed. Every time she found a solution, it created more problems.


	14. Chapter 14

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Perhaps it was the first sun, Alpha, sinking below the foothills, or a sensible worry about what the citizens of Vlissinghem might do to him, but the Doctor felt chilled. He stood still, arms folded, the very picture of innocence – which might still not be enough to stay the executioner's hand.

Three of the five shepherds moved towards him, unslinging a bow, a rifle and a flechette gun respectively.

'Hello there!' beamed the Time Lord. 'I'm a stranger here, just passing by, thought I'd drop in and say hello, meet your leader and all that.'

The trio exchanged glances. Clearly they were suspicious. Were they demented enough to just kill him on the spot? The bowman nocked an arrow; the rifleman unlatched a safety catch.

'By the way, who is your leader? Not too clear on that. Cormelle doesn't really keep records on things like that.'

Mention of "Cormelle" brought a jerk of recognition from all three men.

'Ye come from there?' asked one, waving his weapon at a point over the Doctor's shoulder.

'Passing through there, too.'

The rifleman, his features working slowly, looked the Doctor up and down.

'Should we just kill 'im?'

'You can do whatever you like after I meet your leader.' Particular emphasis on "leader".

Not going too well, judged the Doctor. Perhaps try a little reverse psychology?

'Actually, nah, you'd better not take me to your leader. I don't want to see him. Show me a minor flunky instead.'

This strange reversal took the trio by surprise. They didn't seem to be the brightest citizens of the polity, which is probably why they were out herding sheep.

'You don't tell us'n what to do,' growled the archer.

'Not your leader! Please!'

The man wielding the sinister wide-mouthed flechette gun prodded the Time Lord in the buttocks, making the Doctor wince and hope the safeties were engaged.

'Get along, you. We'll take you to see Erich. Then you'll see!'

The slow walk along the close-cropped road was instructive. They passed over the foothills that surrounded Vlissinghem, which explained why the township had survived largely intact – the hills were a natural barrier against any near-misses. Well-tended orchards crowned each hillcrest. Acres of cattle-pens lay on the inner slopes, many of them full of lowing cattle herded in before nightfall. Beyond these were the few remnants of the town's suburbs, buildings long since cannibalised or demolished for building material. Only an occasional chimney or hearthstone remained of most buildings and wherever an upright portion still stood, various biochem sensors had been glued to it. Still further in, almost half a mile away, the remaining homes were in fairly good condition. Many sported a small plastic addition to the outer walls, which the Time Lord recognised as a chemical and biological refuge; if more gas or warbugs were used to attack Vlissinghem, then the locals could hide and gain a measure of protection. Outer walls had been reinforced with timbers and stone from the demolished housing, windows overlaid with translucent plastic shields and occasional gongs or rattles could be seen hanging from doorways – gas alarms. Two big plastic cattle sheds on streets adjacent to the central clock tower were open and empty, spick and span and spotless inside – implying that they went unused recently due to lack of enemies.

The archer went ahead of the others and trotted off to a squat, robust house at one corner of the clock tower, knocked firmly on the door and called to the person within, who emerged.

Ah! Erich! Brilliant! Thought the Doctor.

Erich appeared to be exactly what he was – the product of a hundred generations of stolid Flemish peasant farmers, stocky, moustachioed and displaying little in the way of expression. Like the others, he was well-dressed in woollen clothing.

There wasn't much need for expression – the wickedly spiked club he carried effortlessly spoke volumes for his intention instead.

'Thijs says yer a stranger. Is that true?' he barked.

'Only passing by,' smarmed the Doctor. 'Saw the sheep, came to nosey, like to go now, please.'

'What yez wants and what yez gets may not be the same,' growled Erich. He smacked the club against the nearby wall of the clock-tower, striking sparks. 'Spies aren't common any more. I need to find out what you know, you sneaking swine.'

The trio of shepherds grabbed the traveller by main force, in a grip that would have needed a far stronger man to break. Drawn by the noisy interruption, faces began to appear at windows and in doorways.

'Throw him in there,' ordered Erich, indicating the open house door he'd emerged from. 'I'll deal with him.' Once again he struck sparks with his club.

The Doctor was hurled physically into the home, followed by Erich. The door slammed shut and within seconds anguished howls could be heard, even through the stout wooden door and the shuttered windows. Sniggering with malicious glee, the trio of shepherds departed.

When rough hands propelled the Doctor forward into the house, he took in at a glance the flagged floor, heavy wooden furniture, incongruous radio transmitter and emergency first aid kitbag. Erich slammed the door shut, threw a couple of impressively large bolts and turned to face his victim.

''Spose you want me to yell?' asked the Doctor, entirely unconcerned, ambling slowly into the room with hands in pockets. Erich stared back with a look of astonishment that slowly turned into alarm. His "prisoner" grinned broadly, cupped both hands around his mouth and gave several very convincing shrieks of pain.

Erich walked over to a rough, sturdy table, poured liquid from a flagon into a flowery plastic beaker and downed it quickly.

'How did you know?' he asked, all pretence at ferocity gone.

'Logic. Anyone able to rise to a position of authority and maintain it over time was -' and he screwed up his face in concentration ' – eighty six point three recurring per cent likely to be immune to the Breakdown effect.'

The Flemish farmer shook his head.

'So you took a chance that one man, out of fifteen hundred, was still sane! With one chance in seven that he wasn't – you need your head examining!'

'Needs must. I want answers to what happened here on Hargreave's Fall.'

Without being invited, the Doctor strolled over to the table and sat, looking with curiosity at Erich, who returned both the look and the curiosity.

'Investigator from Earth?'

The time-traveller shrugged.

'Nah. Call me a freelancer. What's your story?'

A look of sadness drifted across the other man's face. His story was short; short, and tragic.

The Breakdown had hit Vlissinghem hard and early, creating a chaotic mass of frenzied citizens who clubbed to death anyone not agreeing to wage violent war against their neighbours. Steenbock had been the first victims, assaulted after minimal preparation, their citizens massacred in fire and steel. After a couple of months of fervent work and planning, they had amassed enough small arms and jerry-rigged armoured vehicles to attack Letterbeke, only being delayed by an outbreak of para-leprosy. Letterbeke had taken more effort, including weapons bought in from mercenaries, who had early detected the smells of easy profit. Light artillery, rocket launchers and warheads loaded with mutated versions of rinderpest and scrapie – these latter all their own invention. Their next nearest rival, Sondeghem, had been vanquished by a nuclear missile fired by nobody knew whom – probably one of the other, more technically-advanced polities to the east of Cormelle; Northcoping were the prime suspects for this, having been involved in the development of fissile-powered reactor systems pre-Breakdown. Northcoping itself was a single large metropolis, unlike the self-destructive smaller agro-towns, able to deploy considerable resources to wage war.

Erich had hidden, been discovered by his fellow citizens and forced to march on Letterbeke. He took the first opportunity to desert, and found his way on foot to Cormelle, whose skies had been free of missiles, mushroom clouds and other insanity. They had taken him in, if reluctantly. That hadn't lasted; he didn't like the way incoming refugees were allotted menial tasks, and told that they were on probation. Unwisely he mentioned this out loud to several of the city councillors, who had him expelled. Not being evil, they gave him emergency medical supplies and a radio to keep in touch with them.

He made a lonely way back to Vlissinghem, and on the way decided to make the best of a bad situation. His town neighbours were suspicious of him at first, until he regaled them with bloodthirsty tales of killing dozens of Cormellean citizens, which bedded him firmly in their demented worldview as a jolly good fellow to have.

Thanks to several bloody raids and ambushes, both inflicted and suffered, Erich rose in the town heirarchy. Eventually, being sane amongst the insane, he was undisputed leader of a community shrunken to less than a sixth of what it had been pre-Breakdown.

Very interesting, mused the Time Lord. So – the Initiate didn't develop overnight. And the original city governors were compassionate enough to allow people to leave with aid. Also, there were no more sane people to rescue from Vlissinghem, they had already made their way to Cormelle.

'You didn't go back to Cormelle?'

Erich sighed.

'I can't . Not morally. I've been able to stop the surviving burghers from going to war. I look after their welfare, even if they don't realise it, and I managed to get the last few others who were immune out of here last time the Red Star sent a mission.'

The farmer drank another beaker of the clear fluid before recalling his manners and indicating the flagon of lager.

'Please help yourself.'

'Not for me. But thank you anyway.'

Silence settled over the pair whilst the Doctor thought. Eventually Erich spoke.

'You are lucky, you know. Back in the early days, when the real lunatics were abroad, they'd have killed you on the spot. They mostly killed each other off.'

'Victims, Erich, victims. Not lunatics.'

The farmer silently raised his eyebrows.

'I am convinced that Cormelle is responsible for the Breakdown Effect. I even know how it's done. The why – that I may never find out.'

Erich's silent, incredulous stare begged an explanation.

'You know they have a so-called "force-barrier" that protects the polity?'

The farmer nodded; he'd been warned via radio not to send refugees too close to the barrier, lest they die, before it could be tuned down.

'Nobody on the Fall would recognise that barrier for what it really is – an empathic repulsor. Fortunately I have experience with them.'

He explained briefly what an empathic repulsor did, and that it must be responsible for the Breakdown. Erich had a hard time taking this in. Not because of the technicalities of limbic system electro-assault, more because Cormelle was still seen as a moral and physical sanctuary from the strife and madness across Hargreave's Fall. Then again, their using such a weapon would explain the mass outbreaks of roiling hatred that erupted every year, turning the moderately-coping citizens of Vlissinghem into borderline psychotics.

'What about the Wong polity? They aren't mad. I've heard of them from Cormelle – can't get a reliable radio signal from them, not with the satellites out of commission. Comsats were the first things to get scragged.'

Struck by a sudden realisation, the Doctor smacked a fist down on the table top, making the flagon bounce and the empty beaker dance.

'Confirmation! Erich, a repulsor system like that has a null point, where the signals cancel each other out perfectly and completely, at a point on the globe exactly the polar opposite of the source.'

He demonstrated with an orange and a toothpick.

Wong's survival owed nothing to remoteness or lack of technology and everything to a location: it was exactly opposite Cormelle and the Breakdown Effect. The Initiates who travelled there were doubtless seeing if it presented any kind of a threat.

'If they are responsible – mind, I'm not saying they are – if they are, why do they keep on doing it?' asked the puzzled farmer.

'I've a theory about that, too. But no data. You wouldn't know what kind of technology Cormelle were trying to create before the Breakdown, do you?'

Erich shrugged.

'Sorry, no.' He snorted in faint amusement. 'I believe they're into agriculture now. Quite ironic, that, since this polity was settled by Flemings who wanted to become farmers, not general scientists.'

Once again the Time Lord felt convinced that Cormelle's "rejection" of technology masked a real reason – worry at being found guilty of sending ninety-five per cent of the population insane.

'Look, Doctor, you can't travel outside in the dark. If our sentries spot you, they'd kill you in a heartbeat. Stay here for tonight, and you can travel on in the morning.'

'Won't your fellow burghers expect to see my battered corpse tomorrow morning?' asked the Doctor, with disarming cheerfulness.

His host shrugged.

'Obviously, you weren't quite dead and managed to escape whilst I was asleep, tired from a busy night's torture.'

The beds in Erich's squat, fortress-like house were surpassingly comfortable, mattresses stuffed with straw, pillows of eiderdown and duvets bulked up with goose feathers. The Doctor spent eight hours of undisturbed slumber, only gradually wakening when the first sunrise occurred.

He blinked hugely, swept a hand over his errant hair, hopped out of the bed and dressed quickly, casting an eye over the shuttered window. From within he could see the clock tower and the clock arms standing at eleven o'clock, and a few ambling locals outside. No air of worry or hurry. Erich must be doing a good enough job as town mayor, or _echt_ mayor, or biggest-bully-in-the-playground.

Downstairs, sunlight poked playful fingers through the shutters, creating quite a colourful panoply over the breakfast table. The Doctor ferretted around in the kitchen and larder, discovering oil, mushrooms and strips of what might have been bacon two thousand years ago, and what could be considered the Fall equivalent of haricot beans, and ended with a gigantic soggy fry-up up that he wolfed down.

'Fodder for the inner man,' he congratulated himself. Clumping and rustling upstairs told of Erich wakening; in fact the farmer had already been up, seen to his livestock and gone back to bed again. He came downstairs to discover his guest cleaning crockery in the kitchen.

'Don't hang about here too long,' he warned. 'Right now most of the early risers are having a second sleep, but once Beta is up, there'll be a lot of people on the streets.'

The Doctor turned to speak in reply, but instead was hit by an enormous wracking spasm that centred in his skull, shot down his arms, turned his fingers to jelly and caused him to drop the washed plate. The crash and fragments made a noise easily the equal of two galaxies in collision.

The hideous feeling passed within seconds. The Doctor stood upright again, breathing heavily.

Erich, meanwhile, clutched his head in both hands and staggered painfully over to the kitchen table, propping himself up against it's reassuringly stable bulk, pale and sweating. Revealingly, he didn't show any signs of shock or surprise, which implied he'd suffered this mental assault already -

'Of course! The Breakdown Effect!' hissed the Time Lord, snapping his fingers in angry realisation.

Erich panted for breath, looking exhausted after only seconds. Sweat stood out on his brow and upper lip.

'The Initiate want to get rid of me, Erich, so they've used their repulsor.' A quote from Doctor Johnson came to mind. 'Using the club of Hercules to brain a gnat.'

'It – it – didn't work, then,' panted the farmer, colour slowly returning to his face and examining the traveller with mixed wonder and surprise.

'Nope!' grinned the Doctor. 'Breakdown only works on humans.'

A comment like that needed clarification yet there really wasn't time to explain to a bewildered Erich.

'Be careful, Doctor,' he wheezed. 'When this happens people are mightily hostile. Why not stay here for today?'

Slowly, taking care not to make the hinges or latches creak – he'd applied a trickle of cooking oil to ease their opening - the Doctor opened the kitchen door, the one that faced away from the town centre and the clock tower.

'Matter of time. I can't hang around.' If the Initiate were desperate enough to try killing him with their brain-scrambling technology, they were desperate enough to deliberately target Martha. 'I've left a friend in the city of Cormelle and she's at risk.'

'Wait a second,' gasped Erich. 'If you – if you can get far away from here, then my people won't follow you. The Breakdown sends them crazy with hate, but it makes them stick close to home as well.'

Tribalism, recognised the Doctor. He pointed in wordless horror at the front door, causing Erich to turn round. This placed him in a splendid position for the Doctor to inflict the classic Venusian Aikido sub-clavian pressor, which crumpled the unfortunate farmer to the floor in less than a second.

'Sorry,' murmured the assailant. 'Looks better if your mates find you like this.'

His luck held for three minutes. That enabled him to get out of the residential centre of the small town, into a collection of shearing sheds, pens and corrals where the livestock were shorn or killed and skinned. The air smelt of manure and animal sweat, peat and leather.

'Oy! Who be you?' asked a voice, followed rapidly by a sinister hiss as an arrow tugged at the cloth under his armpit. Without bothering to look backwards, the Doctor took off at a dead run and dodged behind an empty shed. Another arrow made an unpleasantly noisy _thunk_ as it hit the wooden shed wall and pierced through it for a length of three inches.

Interesting. High-powered bow. Didn't notice any tension wheels or cabling, maybe channelled internally. Probably a composite import, sold or left by a mercenary, mused the time traveller, before recalling himself to the present, diving and rolling forward, away from the shed. More deft footwork ensured he remained unpunctured, vaulting lightly over a nine-foot wooden spillway and temporarily avoiding the archer, who stood only a metre and half tall and who couldn't vault at all, let alone lightly.

Nevertheless, that same archer was by now shouting lustily, doubtless wakening his fellow homicidal citizens to the presence of a stranger in their midst, one who had rendered Erich senseless in his escape attempt. Doors and window shutters began to bang open. Shouts and calls started to ring out from every side.

Getting a bit hairy – oh! What a good idea. Ulysses eat your heart out!

The Doctor threw the locks on a large sheep-pen with his sonic screwdriver, then panicked the silly creatures inside with an infrasonic blast from his gadget. He chose the largest ewe visible and deftly underslung himself, fingers entwined into it's fleece. His back bumped uncomfortably and painfully on the earth of the pen, then the cobbles of the paving outside, then an earthen street. Judging the moment, he dropped from the sheep and rolled away.

'Get a bath!' he muttered, wincing at the rancid after-odour from the fetid fleece. The flock bounded and rebounded off walls and fencing, bleating, skittish and panicky, hooves clattering and creating an echoing din that completely camouflaged his escape. Sidling unseen round a corner, he witnessed half a dozen angry peasants chasing the escapees.

This ruse had moved him perhaps five hundred metres from his starting point, earning a minute at the most before the whole town turned out to hunt him down. He could hear a growing hubbub from the town centre as a mob formed, a low-frequency combination of shouting and muttering.

_Median sonic architecture would indicate at least three hundred people circulating around the clock tower. Not good odds!_

A champing whinny from across the street caught his ear: horses made nervous by the unusual commotion at this time of morning. Muted clattering from hooves implied that the horses were spooked enough to be prancing up and down inside the wooden stables.

Risking discovery by any stablehands or farmers present, the Doctor strolled quickly yet nonchalantly over to the stables, where the smells of horse sweat, manure and hay all greeted him. The half dozen horses were stamping in their folds, whickering and neighing. He cast a glance outside, decided that he needed the extra speed that horsepower would give him to escape, and quickly formulated a plan.

Equally quickly, real life interfered. A group of towndwellers wielding various weapons stamped down the street outside and formed a cordon across the beaten earth street, at least a dozen of them. Several carried various models of the flechette gun he'd been prodded with earlier, and one had a laser carbine.

Scrap Plan One. That high tech carbine might not be working, but if it was then he could be burnt down at half a kilometre, easily, and turned into confetti by the dart guns well before then. He needed a distraction. A big one.

The Doctor leant up against the timbers of the stable wall and sniffed. Ammoniac resin. Recently cut, too. If so, then the nails and screws –

The proof of the pudding and Plan Two's incept was proved correct when he used the sonic screwdriver to extract a four-inch nail from a timber beam it had been hammered into; the nail was bright and shiny and uncorroded. Frantic minutes of nail-extraction followed as he weakened the building to the point of collapse, hoarding the nails for no reason he could articulate. Finally he selected the least skittish horse, a bay mare, mounted it bareback and swept the sonic screwdriver around the stables.

Unlike sheep, when horses stampede, life is at risk. The five unsettled horses leapt like demons when they were hit by the sonic sweep, leaping and kicking at their pen walls, breaking those down and going on to smash down the outer walls of the stables.

Whilst the riderless horses went south, the Doctor went north on his mount, followed by a crescendo of bangs and crashes as the stables collapsed in a cloud of hay and sawdust. Frightened horses bucked and ran amongst the Vlissinghem folk, creating a frightening maelstrom of panicked people and animals.

Fingers tightly entwined in the mare's mane, the best the Doctor could do to direct the animal was to kick at it's heaving flanks and hope for the best. They hurdled fences twice, each time causing him to almost lose his balance. Passing townsfolk hurrying to the mob forming at the clock tower gaped at him in incomprehension at first, expressions which became hostile within minutes. Luckily he reached the edge of Vlissinghem and raced outwards across the open fallow ground before anyone collected their wits enough to stop or shoot him.

Once atop the ridge that surrounded the town, he managed to slow his steed enough to look back via pocket telescope. Yes, they were following, and on horses, six of them. Horses with proper tackle and saddles.

'Look at it this way. You're getting an education in how the Breakdown Effect worked in the past, in current real-time.'

Not terribly persuasive.

A narrow strip of grass not more than a metre away from him suddenly charred into ash, for a distance of twenty metres. The sweet, acrid tang stung his nostrils.

Laser-burn! he recognised straightaway. His horse didn't like the wash of heat from the discharge and pranced sideways before plunging onwards.

The nails in his coat pocket clinked, making the material sag with their weight, and a cunning plan occurred to him – only possible with the sonic screwdriver in one hand and nails in the other, which meant trying to steer the horse via his knees.

After a pause amongst the sheltering trees, they went over the hilltop and cantered down the other side.

Out here, beyond the assumed township boundary, there were no structures or earthworks that he could hide amongst or behind. Rolling landscapes, fallow fenced areas, occasional orchards, fields of sunflowers and maize. Nice and open, for anyone hunting him.

Jochen leaned over the flank of his horse and threw up again, weakly. When he got angry like this, which happened at least once per year, his stomach always cramped-up to the size of a thimble. He straightened up again, ignoring the terrible pounding headache that caused his vision to swim and shade into pinkness at the edges.

'Ahoi! Alright?' called Marc, fifty metres away on his brood mare. Jochen waved. Marc was one of theirs. He was okay.

Achille had already fallen headlong from his horse and suffered concussion, at the very least, on the bare earth streets, thanks to not wearing a hat. He himself couldn't afford to drop out of the pursuit now, if there were only five of them left.

The sour taste in his mouth didn't fade. Not for the last time, Jochen wished they'd had time to organise a proper pursuit, but the chaos back at the stables had left several people injured by maddened horses and the rest were shrieking with rage and insistent on immediate pursuit. His own feelings were a whirling melee of hatred and anger, sufficient to agree to the headlong chase. At first.

So here he was, clutching the strap of his weapon grimly in order that it didn't fall. They were expensive and delicate weapons, lasers, and he'd not be able to afford another even if the opportunity arose and mercenaries were present to offer him another. His first shot had gone wild, even when the stranger who'd attacked Erich was standing motionless on the hills. His own fault, of course, shooting whilst on the move. Patrice and Meers to his left cantered up the hills to reach the crowning trees. They paused and waved him forward. Both had flechette guns with a short effective range.

He passed the strip of burnt ground that indicated his earlier, inaccurate shot. He wasn't going to make that mistake again. No.

Instead he dismounted, tied his horse's reins to a branch and strode to the crest of the hill.

Yes! There was the stranger, heading away at a steady canter. About seven hundred metres, or easy shooting distance. Not one of us, fair game.

Jochen unlocked the safety mechanisms of his carbine and marched forward, intending to get out into the open and burn down the stranger without being encumbered by trees, tree trunks, branches or leaves.


	15. Chapter 15

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The Doctor felt an unpleasant itching between his shoulder-blades and dug one knee into his ride's flank, causing the horse to shy unpredictably. Yakima had taught him that trick back at Universal Studios, along with how to ride an unwilling horse in the first place. Doing this might keep the shooter off-target once or twice, but not for very long. Of course it worked better in Westerns, where the shooter didn't have a weapon that could shoot out to twenty-five kilometres without any need to lead or deflect.

Daring the horse not to throw him, he turned and glanced back at the trees, seeing a lone figure striding forward.

Without warning, the confident stride became a hopping stumble and the man collapsed abruptly onto his rear.

'Shame about that. Still, at least his horse is okay,' mused the Doctor, feeling very little compassion for his victim.

Marc witnessed his fellow pursuer's collapse and came over at a fast canter, fearful that Jochen had been stricken down by an unseen foe with another laser carbine. His own horse, Min, got close enough for him to see the cursing farmer pulling at a stout leather boot before Min reared upright and threw him backwards, snorting in pain. Marc's right wrist fractured with a horrid brittle snap when he tried to break his fall, making him pass out for a minute.

Jochen held up a hand to stop Patrice or Meers getting closer. He pulled his boot off and rubbed his painfully pierced foot. The item that had done such damage was still buried in the sole; a nail as long as his middle finger, around the end of which another nail had been bent in a solid spiral. Once dropped to the ground the spiralled nail would cause it to fall with the other nail facing upwards, taking the unwary by complete surprise. He'd put all his weight on it, and to judge by the scraping agony, it had broken bones on the way in. Min must have trodden on one, too.

That wasn't the worst. He pulled the laser carbine over to him by the strap, noticing the rattle from it. The ready light was still on.

Patrice came over, slowly, looking carefully at the grass around and picking up several more of the nasty booby-traps. He tutted at the damaged carbine, taking it from Jochen.

'Meers and I will follow him. You and Marc catch up as best you can.'

The pounding rage that swam about Jochen's head helped him to hobble over to Marc and retrieve his bow and arrows.

'Come on,' he told the groggy man. 'You can help me walk, I can use the bow.'

So the pursuit had been reduced to two riders.

One of the victims of his little improvised caltrops must have been carrying the laser carbine. That much was obvious, or he'd be dead.

Craning back, he squinted at the now distant trees and saw the remaining two unhorsed followers lurching down the grassy slopes.

'My, my, persistent, aren't we,' he muttered.

He concentrated on riding, feeling his buttocks growing numb with the undampened impacts of the horse.

Persistence must be a consequence of the Breakdown Effect, especially with it being so recent. Increased aggression, increased tribalism, increased paranoia.

Not only that, he was being pursued by two men who were better riders than he was, on horses with proper tackle. They would catch up with him in –

quick look back to judge distance –

seven minutes at the outside.

Ahead of him, the rolling grasslands lay unencumbered by cover. No forests, no towns, no hilly terrain, and Beta came up over the horizon to increase visibility even more.

When he looked back over his shoulder, both pursuers were bunched together over to his right.

Strange. Why bunch like that? Spaced equally far apart is more sensible.

Aha! Unless they know of Something over to the right that might help me escape –

It was a gamble, certainly. However, if he didn't take drastic action they'd be on him in a couple of minutes – they had been flogging their horses hard and were catching up sooner than he anticipated.

Losing precious seconds, he kneed his reluctant steed in the left flank, as hard as he could, and the mare altered course only sufficiently for him to hear the whine of flechette rounds impacting the nearby earth as he passed in front of his enemy. His lead over the chase was down to a minute, if that.

Salvation loomed suddenly out of the ground beneath him. Cresting a shallow rise, he came upon a desolate hollow that had been hidden from view by the groundswell. Long, rank weeds and shrubs grew in profusion amongst the derelict shells of half a dozen vehicles that clustered around collapsed shelters. Ragged skeletons hung half out of doors, or beneath rotten canvas awnings. Dimly, faded into pale scarlet obscurity, the emblem of Red Star could be made out on the shelters.

Scrambling headlong from his steed, the Doctor darted in amongst the hulks, found one with sufficient ground clearance and dived beneath it – whilst taking care not to crush or break off any weeds covering the entrance.

From there his view of the world was restricted to a narrow longitudinal strip, bounded by the perished rubber wheels of the vehicle looming above him and interspersed with long fronds of a bracken-analogue that trembled with pollen and nectar. Thanks to the acoustics of his hidey-hole, the hoofbeats of his pursuers could be heard echoing tinnily before they arrived in person.

Undetermined minutes later the time traveller still lay prone, waiting for the appearance of either or both of his pursuers. Their hoofbeats could be discerned travelling around the lip of the sunken area in an interwoven pitter-patter that went on for minutes.

Where any other potential victim might have been grateful for the reprieve, however temporary, the Doctor's skin crawled in horripilation as he ran a mental gauntlet of reasons why his remorseless Vlissinghem shadows might not want to venture into this vale of dead medics and ambulances.

A wordless shout, pitched high in the adapted glottals of the Fall's Flemish farmers, warned him that the hunters were going to enter his sanctuary dell. Loud scrunching over to the left told of a horse approaching. The scrunching became seven per cent less intense, implying that the rider had dismounted.

'O hè!' came a sinister shout, followed by the blasting wail of flechette rounds smacking into and off the landscape, rattling off the derelict Red Star vehicles, shredding already holed tents. 'Pickabu!'

_Your colloquial English needs a bit of work. Where's your mate gotten to?_

Only one set of footsteps could be heard in the weed-stricken wasteland. The second horseman remained a silent and static sentry, if his lack of sound was any indication.

Another storming sleet of flechettes blasted away most of a sagging tented building, sending up clouds of dust and bits of fabric.

_Hang on – what's missing from this picture?_

Back at the Academy, one of his most illuminating seminar series had been with Godalbertus, who taught him to look for what _wasn't_ there, what you _didn't_ see, what colour had been removed from the painting, and – a staple from 1930's Mittel-European _tromp l'oeils_ – what was missing from the picture.

No insects.

A shower of flechettes like that ought to have disturbed hundreds of flies. The nectar-laden fronds all around him ought to be buzzing with flies or bees or their Fall analogues. In fact, when he listened and paid attention, there were no insect noises at all in the hollow. None.

Point one: insects don't work on emotion or superstition. They are empirical rationalists. If they avoid an area, then there is a concrete reason why.

Point two: the ferocious horsemen from Vlissinghem were highly reluctant to enter the hollow. Again, there had to be a concrete reason why raving lunatics propelled by the Breakdown Effect would avoid a small dip in the ground.

Slowly, the Doctor looked across the wasted acreage of boney remains and dead ambulances.

There – a skeleton throttling another skeleton. They were both tumbling from the back of an ambulance. Over there – was that another skeleton dangling from a tree, thanks to a makeshift noose? and beside it was a nest of bones, interlocked, all ages from five to fifty, bayonets and boots combined. Whatever happened here was neither quiet nor commonplace.

A hollow clacking noise echoed around the dead campsite, repeated twice with muttered cursing in Flemish. The hunter had run out of ammunition. There was no sound of another magazine being loaded, either.

Taking a calculated risk, the Doctor slithered from beneath his hide to see if he could tackle the nearby hunter whilst keeping out of sight of the other horseman. Careful as he was, a halloo went up from beyond the narrow depression and the dismounted hunter leapt into view ten metres away.

'Whoops. Bad timing, eh?' jested the trapped Time Lord. The horseman had slung his now-useless flechette gun over one shoulder and carried a laser carbine. He swung the weapon up and aimed.

'I warn you – don't!' snapped the Doctor, before diving and rolling away. A sudden and intense burst of heat fell across his back, and the glow of an earth-bound sun brought tears to his eyes, followed by a shattering explosion as the damaged carbine blew up and liberated all it's stored energy. The Doctor continued rolling, stifling the smouldering fibres of his jacket and trousers, until he rolled up against the immobile tracks of a derelict.

Where the hunter had stood was the epicentre of a reeking, scorched circle of earth, charred weeds and a single, smoking boot.

'I warned him. I warned him!' muttered the Doctor, athletically crawling beneath the bulk of the tracked vehicle. Smoke tickled his nose and made his eyes smart. 'Those things are _so_ temperamental. Worse than a mobile when you drop them.'

Once again hidden, he could see little from his vantage point. A sound of hooves came closer until the second horseman, looking wan, dismounted from his horse and looked with disbelief at the single remnant of his fellow-hunter. Mutely, he kicked the boot.

His horse shied violently into the air, kicked dangerously, shook it's head and began to back away. The hunter stood motionless, staring at the ground. Finally, staggering, he seemed to gather his wits and shook his head, before abruptly settling into a startled pose.

'No!' he yelled. For a puzzled moment the Doctor wondered if he'd been spotted, even lying still and silent under cover. Yet the hunter wasn't even looking at him. The smoke that hung in the air made vision difficult, bringing tears to the eyes easily and profusely.

Snarling incoherently, the hunter staggered to one side, then went down on one knee, before bringing up his flechette gun and spraying a semi-circular area to his front. Weeds flew like confetti, more tents fluttered silently as holes appeared in them and other darts whined off the ground.

Wild-eyed, the hunter managed to get to his feet, making frantic gestures with his left hand to ward off invisible enemies. The look of fear on his face became abject terror. Once again he yelled and shrieked and raved at nothing, before ramming the muzzle of his weapon into his mouth and pulling the trigger -

A stunned Doctor eased himself from beneath his hiding place. The pieces fell into place abruptly, even as he felt his knees weaken.

This dip in the ground had been ground zero for a warhead. A bomb or missile or rocket, and a big one, too. That warhead had contained a nerve agent, a persistent one that contaminated the soil. When Red Star set up their retrieval suite here, the gas vapours sent them insane. Homicidally-insane. Suicidally-insane. Driven mad by appalling hallucinations.

The nerve-agent was extremely persistent and deadly, which is why nobody wanted to follow him into the hollow. After a decade or two it had declined in effect, yet was still deadly enough to kill off any insects that settled here.

Then that idiot with the laser carbine had vapourised great quantities of soil and plant-life that had absorbed the agent over time, putting it into the air.

And into the lungs of anyone careless enough to breath it.

The Doctor managed to stagger a couple of metres before the ground tilted on a hidden pivot, swept up from beneath his feet and slapped harshly against his face. The world went away.

'Order! Order!' came the self-important voice, echoing off the carefully-designed walls of the Meeting Hall. Fifty other bodies, vague and shifting, sat or stood and ceased talking. They appeared shimmering and ethereal compared to the solid timber hall with its ranks of slab-sided seating.

'Thank you,' intoned the speaker, who had no face. Nor, for that matter, did any of the other presences. He, or it, stood at a podium and "looked" at the audience arrayed before him in a semi-circle. 'The matter under discussion is over-population. You should all be familiar with the agenda.' The faceless lecturer waved a sheet of paper. 'All copies individually numbered and to be returned and checked against the Invigilator's list.'

Sheets of paper rustled. A whisper of sound ran around the hall.

'Item One: Communications have confirmed that a radio message has been received from the Wong expedition. They have successfully been shuttled-out from the Gorgopotamus polity and established their stockade. Consequently, every part of available land on Hargreave's Fall is now under claim from a polity.'

Murmurous sounds from the faceless crowd.

'No more room,' commented one individual.

'Nowhere to _expand_,' corrected another.

'That leads to Item Two,' said the speaker at podium, loudly. 'Overpopulation. Our census data is not completely up to date, since several other polities – Gorgopotamus and the Wong expedition being a case in point – don't update us regularly - ' at which an angry murmur sounded ' - so I can only approximate the current population of the Fall as seventy millions.'

More worried mutterings.

Without any transition or warning, the single entity at the podium suddenly became five.

'It will be noticed that the current population of the Fall stands at nearly ten thousand times what it did when our ancestors landed here five hundred years ago. Reflect on that – for every individual such as Roger Cormelle, nearly ten thousand other people now walk our lands.'

Another faceless entity took up the recount.

'Nobody back in the days of the original descent can have imagined that a day would come when overpopulation affected the whole planet, nor that it would come so soon. One day in the near future, our neighbouring polities will have expanded to the limits of their boundaries -'

'You don't know that,' interrupted a speaker from the featureless audience.

A third speaker took over.

'Yes we do! The nearest polities are those that were settled earliest, and have the greatest population density as a result. Why, Northcoping is only a couple of generations behind Cormelle in technical achievement.'

The second speaker resumed.

'As I said, to the limits of their boundaries. Where do they go then? They will encroach on our territory. Our territory and that of others, but most importantly, on our territory.'

Another speaker from the audience spoke up.

'That sounds like a recipe for conflict. Struggle.'

All five faceless creatures behind the podium nodded in unison.

'Exactly what we came here to avoid! War and the rumour of war.'

Time ebbed and flowed. The five creatures became one.

'You will note Item Five. Communications have been working on directed-energy technology that has an application to our situation, to wit: empathic repulsors.'

Heads bent downwards as the audience read about empathic repulsor technology. A three-dimensional display off to one side of the hall flashed into life, showing a schematic of the city-state, where the circular array of an empathic repulsor would lie, how it would radiate; the scale shifted and zoomed out, showing how the nearby polities would be prevented from moving towards Cormelle by the repulsor. Their crawling blue encroachment was instead directed south, west and east, away and not towards Cormelle.

'They'll start moving on each other. You're only moving the problem,' stated an objector.

'No!' said the podium-speaker with glee. 'Because we can sell _them_ the repulsor technology, or the repulsor itself. To avoid having other polities move on them they need to have our technology.'

'Oh! That's quite elegant!'

'I like that.'

'When can we start?'

Secrecy needed to be maintained, first and foremost. If other polities got wind of what Cormelle was planning, they wouldn't be happy. So – several weeks would go by, until Comms had secretly buried their boundary repulsor array. The thirty-metre sections were already being created and stored. A central control site would also be set up, clandestinely, to avoid any persons from other polities from seeing or noticing anything unusual. All those present here for this secret briefing would be invited to attend the first generation of an empathic repulse signal.

'We solve all our problems in one go. Over-population, border disputes, struggle for resources, lack of acknowledgement of Cormelle as the primary polity – all that will cease.'

'Cease! Cease! Cease!' chanted the audience. 'All this will cease! Peace will cease!'

In an instant they vanished, leaving only the silent Meeting Hall and the three-dimensional display, which winked out of existence a moment later.

The Doctor struggled against the giant sandstone slabs covering his eyelids, which grated across the surface of each eye as he fought them open.

A perpendicular world greeted him. Warm, bright, sunny, and at ninety degrees to his perspective. A horse cropped grass unconcernedly when gravity should have sent it plunging to the bottom of this world – which is when he sat up and the world resumed it's normal orientation.

Aside from a gang of trolls with hammers having a panel-beating party in the back of his head, he felt reasonably okay. All limbs attached, all the rest intact.

Slowly, taking care not to fall over, he stood and walked carefully over to the horse, which looked up at him briefly before returning to eating.

'You're my poison tester. If you're here eating grass, then the nerve gas is long gone.'

This particular horse had a saddle. Not his original steed, rather from one of the now-deceased hunters. Whickering, it suffered him to swing up into the saddle.

At this elevation he could see why the horse was unaffected; it had been on the lip of the crater and away from the poison gases.

A wordless shout full of hatred caught his ear and he turned to look back over the grasslands, back towards Vlissinghem. Unbelievably, the two earlier victims of his nail-booby traps were only a hundred metres distant, lurching unsteadily towards him. Between them they managed to clumsily nock an arrow to a bow and loosed it inaccurately. Their second attempt came within ten metres, so the Doctor applied spurs and moved off at a steady twelve kilometres an hour.

_How long was I out for_! he wondered, looking overhead. Alf was near setting. _Damn. Six hours at least. Not all wasted_.

No, not at all wasted. His non-human physiology, the lessened effectiveness of the nerve gas over time and his distance from the source all played a part in his survival. Still, his subconscious mind had been affected.

What had that peculiar hallucination been? A faceless crowd braying about the end of peace – yes, easily what he would see as a nightmare, one induced by a gas that created nightmares. The beginning of fifty years of mindless bloodshed and violence and the death of tens of millions – easily a nightmare.

They didn't have any faces because he'd created them out of a generic template – the precursors of the Initiate, whom he'd never met. The Meeting Hall had been utterly accurate and complete because he'd been there and knew it's details intimately.

And there it was. How the Breakdown Effect had been created, and why, and when, and by whom. Not that it would be written down anywhere by the guilty parties involved. Even if it had been, they would have destroyed anything so incriminating long ago.

By now he was reaching more broken ground, with occasional gullies, clumps of thorn bushes, stands of vegetation and trees. Every five minutes he turned around in the saddle and looked to see where his pursuers were, eventually using his telescope when they became too far for normal vision.

About a kilometres short of the broken lands, the two injured hunters gave up. Turning, they slowly limped their way back across the gently rolling plains towards Vlissinghem, their shadows preceding them.

'Tribalism cuts both ways,' mused their intended victim. 'Millwall Supporter's Syndrome: ferocious in your own back yard, don't like to get too far from home, I suspect.'

His adventures weren't over. When he recognised the copse of pine trees he'd sheltered in the day before he turned his horse loose and slapped its haunches, sending it trotting back the way it had come.

By now Beta had reached the horizon. The light would last for less than an hour, and even now visibility was poor.

'Bunk down here,' he told nobody. That is, he didn't think anyone was present and able to hear him. A pair of nearby ears did prick up, and their owner came looking for the source of the noise.

Sitting with his back to a pine tree, or the closest thing that Hargreave's Fall came to a Scots Fir, the Doctor realised he had unconsciously become silent and still, as immobile as the trees around him. His senses had detected a threat. What could it be?

Stealthy footfalls scrunched the carpet of dead pine needles. A pallid white shape stalked around the trees furthest from him, hesitated, then darted into the copse.

_Oh no! A Splenacosaur!_

The Time Lord recognised the ugly, vicious creature at once from his reading different background media about the Fall. They were the sole dangerous native species, only recently discovered; it was fortunate that the planet's first settlers hadn't landed anywhere near the creature's original habitat. They made good hunters and guard dogs. This one had probably been kept or trained by mercenaries and left to run wild when or if their masters left, died or went mad.

This one was bigger than his horse. It bared long, jagged teeth and hissed eagerly, all ready to turn him into dinner, sizing him up at a distance of ten metres.

The only item he had that might fend it off was his sonic screwdriver. He gingerly took it from a pocket, set it for maximum output and managed to make the beast hop backwards in surprise. Then it began to run at him –

Improvising desperately, the Doctor stooped, grasped a fistful of needles from the ground and threw them at the charging beast, directly into the sonic beam.

With a loud popping akin to a wine bottle being uncorked, the needles, fresh and rich with resin or dried and flammable, exploded in a dazzling flash. The Splenacosaur, snout scorched, shrieked angrily and swerved away. It didn't stop running and a pale blob in the middle distance was the last the Doctor saw of it. He stayed in the copse but took the sensible precaution of climbing into a tree, where he spent an uncomfortable and sleepless night.

Marvon received the news first, which gave him time to adjust. He called in several other Initiates to inform them.

'He survived?' repeated Grace.

'Not just survived, survived _unaffected_. The sensor station for the perimeter let him back in.'

Other Initiates in the office block, doing paperwork or admin, began to pay closer attention.

'Was that wise?' asked one.

Marvon directed a stinging glare at the speaker, one of the last batch of Initiates to be awoken.

'This is The Doctor we're talking about here. A legend, in the flesh. Believe me, if we take direct action against him, people will start to ask awkward questions.'

Grace looked thoughtful.

'His assistant, that interfering black girl, has vanished. No, we haven't frozen her!' she added, seeing Marvon's eyes widen with alarm. 'One of the fishbelly staff at the Hospital has also vanished.'

The engineer thumped his hand into an open palm.

'Lords above, we don't need this right before an enlargement operation!'

'We can't risk him telling other polities about what he knows, what he's discovered about the Breakdown,' snapped Grace. 'I move that we go to Ultimate Emergency.'

Marvon frowned, his temper not improving. Going that far meant a lot of work for him and the few Initiate engineers. The other Initiate members began to come over at hearing the word "Emergency".

Nora at that moment was over at the Hospital, issuing the cleaning staff with ID cards, posting additional security guards on the entrance and installing a CCTV system in the Reception vestibule, a system kept in storage for a couple of centuries and prone to signal fall-out and synchrony problems. The overt reason for this sudden increase, obviously, was the arson attempt with a bucket of flammable chemicals. The Initiates also didn't want the previously invisible and ignored white boilersuited staff being able to move with casual impunity any longer. Doctor Zollern didn't know what the intruder in Data and Records might have discovered; the tell-tale bundles of recording cores had been neatly replaced in their storage cabinets whilst he and Wonfro were escorting their prisoner. He feared the worst.

If he could but have witnessed the seething, icy anger that the returning Time Lord felt, he would have feared considerably more.

'How is Erika getting on with her "special mission"?' he asked Grace. Marvon made a dismissive "harrumph!".

'Finding an acceptable medium of exchange is the problem. She's promised gold specie that we have in secure holding as security.'

'We have gold bullion?' asked Zollern, greatly surprised. Grace smiled a cat-like smile.

' "Contributions" from the fishbellies. The ones that arrived with excess bribe-money for mercenaries en route.' She pointed at the sulky Marvon. 'Thanks to Erika we won't have any reason to worry during the enlargement.'

Zollern paused thoughtfully.

'If we do go to Ultimate, we're going to need her to keep recruiting. Send her a message to carry on recruiting until we recall her. Now, we need to message other Initiates about going Ultimate.'


	16. Chapter 16

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The Initiate sent their shuttlecraft and Mister Red Braid to collect the Doctor from the repulsor boundary. They didn't want him getting into the general population and inciting any mischief, even if they had told Red Braid that it was purely a courtesy to save his legs.

When the shuttle landed an escort was waiting for him, half a dozen of the Initiate looking grimly determined. They crowded him off the hardstand and made sure nobody could get near enough him to exchange words, then into a slab-sided trailer attached to one of the ubiquitious electric vehicles.

Packed in without room to move, the Time Lord looked coldly over the faces in front of him. They stared back, as if daring him to try anything, any rash move.

'I'm willing to allow you to leave Cormelle, unharmed,' he warned them. A few snorts of derision were the only answer. He shrugged. 'I offered. You can take the consequences.'

His reasoning was that they wanted him dead, since he knew far too much already, and had survived the attempt to scramble his brains with the repulsor. They didn't want blood on their hands and a consequently hostile or inquisitive citizenry, or Ambassador Goodkind, so a nasty "accident" would be arranged.

The vehicle hummed and rattled along. Only after a gradual descent did the Doctor realise where he was being taken. The trailer jinked and crabbed, banging into walls on either side before the rear door opened to allow two of the guards inside access to a man-high rusty door, set in a curving metal wall. Using a set of countersunk keys, they unlatched the door, bringing the sour taste of corrosion sweeping into the trailer. On an unspoken command, the rest bodily pushed the Doctor through and past the doorway, after which the door was screwed back firmly into place, leaving him in a creaking, unlit chamber barely large enough to breathe deeply in.

A brief burst with the sonic screwdriver revealed the weeping, rusted bulk of an ancient atomic pile to his front, the inner wall of Power Tower behind him.

A grim smile twitched his lips. Quite what he'd expected. Leave him here for a few hours, then announce a tragic accident when his irradiated corpse was "discovered".

Further exploration revealed that three atomic power units were stacked atop one another like pennies, leaving a narrow gap between their cores and the spaceship hull. This was the area he'd been forced into, an airtight zone where there might not be enough air for him to breathe.

All internal fittings and fitments had been removed from the derelict utility. This created handy foot- and handholds that he could feel by touch alone, using them to climb up the side of the power units until he rolled over the top and stood upright.

Overhead, the more recently added cap shone back in the blue light of his sonic screwdriver. A quick approximation of the air volume meant he'd need to reduce his metabolism to barely-ticking over if he didn't want to suffer an unwanted regeneration.

Therefore, the search team the Initiate sent to investigate Power Tower sixteen hours later were to find the Doctor sitting immobile and silent, cross-legged and impassive, but most certainly not dead. A huge intake of air and a malicious grin was his only response to their incredulity.

Doctor Zollern, along as the medical expert who would sorrowfully declare the Doctor asphyxiated, irradiated and dead as a stone, felt professionally aggrieved that their victim remained alive. He took a pulse and took it again, then took it again, then took his own and then tried the Doctor's for a fourth time.

'This man is not human!' he spluttered. The other members of the search team, sweaty and fatigued after struggling to the top of the atomic piles in their protective suits, looked backwards and forwards between each other.

'Get him back in the trailer!' barked Zollern (the external suit speaker struggled to convey his anger, and managed); the team did so, not gently, and left him there after a short journey of five minutes.

Which, calculated the mischievous prisoner, would be just time enough to drive to the Initiate offices on the other side of the city centre.

Zollern was not happy. He wasn't happy that the Doctor was still alive, and he wasn't happy with his fellow Initiate members. Nora took the brunt of his displeasure.

'It never occurred to you to test him medically, did it!' raged the doctor. 'No wonder he didn't succumb to the Breakdown Effect. He's no more liable to be a victim than – than – than the Judoon!'

Feeling balked and unlucky, Nora didn't appreciate being criticised in front of other members. As ever, anyone working in the offices quickly took an interest.

'What do you propose, then?' she snapped.

Zollern glared back at her.

'It's not _my_ job to recover _your_ mistakes! We're just lucky he didn't sabotage the atomic pile. Ayah hallahi, if he had!'

Unspoken was the fact that going Ultimate, as they planned, would have been impossible if their errant prisoner had damaged the fission plant in any way.

Having suggested the novel and bloodless, and incidentally completely useless, method of eliminating their uninvited guest, Marvon tried another suggestion.

'Put him in the Fridge.'

The angry doctor paused with his mouth open.

'Eh? What? Are you suggesting we have him join the Initiate? _ He's not one of us!'_

'Not to add him to the Initiate. Just to keep him permanently frozen,' added a new member; Ian Brinklove. 'With his assistant, if we can track her down, too.'

Neither alive nor dead, and most definitely out of circulation – such idea did merit attention, decided the irate doctor Zollern. Two rogue elements like that had to be gotten rid of before the forthcoming enlargement.

Human nature being what it is, the puzzled and disappointed Initiate were still keen to interrogate their prisoner. After all, he'd been at ground level in one of the hostile agro-towns beyond the boundary; why not prise information out of him that otherwise meant Initiate members risking their lives?

They managed to dose him with seven shots of tranquiliser whilst in the trailer, a process that also saw five Initiates being laid out from their own hypo-sprays in the struggle. After that, bandaged about the face and hands to prevent any recognition, he was carried on a service gurney into the Hospital. Zollern didn't want to physically tie his prisoner down – people might wonder why.

The supposed patient was taken into the High Maintenance Suite, then beyond that and into the room full of suspended-animation chests whilst the dozy patients in High Maintenance were screened off. Once again, Doctor Zollern didn't want witnesses, and the Initiate staff were highly experienced at moving unwilling inmates without being detected.

A quick spray with an aerosol antidote resurrected the Doctor, who sat upright and blinked sagely.

'Putting me on ice?' he quipped as they restrained him with the bandages, looped and tied down to the trolley.

'You can help us with information before you get sent to sleep,' stated an Initiate whom the Doctor recognised straight away. 'If you help us, we'll spare your assistant.'

'Hello, Ian. Changed your mind about joining the high-risk club, did you?'

Brinklove stared back at the prisoner.

'I decided that the Initiate needed my talents.' Unconsciously, he rubbed the back of his neck.

The Doctor made an intuitive leap. Typically sly, he displayed no emotion.

'Talents that got you into trouble doing research,' he tried. 'And if you had Martha, she'd be here as an inducement.'

'We will catch her,' retorted Brinklove, before realising he'd made a tactical error in admitting Martha remained at liberty.

Their prisoner shrugged.

'Do your worst.'

Although Martha had a very healthy respect for the Doctor's abilities, survival skills and innate cleverness, she felt very worried by the fourth day of his absence.

She and Spiros were managing a hand-to-mouth existence by merging with details of agricultural labourers and stealing crops for food. They bunked down in a fall-out shelter, where they were confident nobody would look. Martha wasn't keen on the hide – it was dank, smelly, dark and infested with creepy-crawlies that Spiros took malicious delight in spearing on the end of a wickedly-sharp knife he'd "acquired" from who-knew-where.

They could have taken refuge in the TARDIS, if Martha hadn't wanted to remain outside the timeship in order to meet the Doctor when he returned – provided that the Initiates didn't arrest or detain him.

Finally her patience wore out and she persuaded Spiros to escort her into the city centre to have a nosey around the Initiate's office block. The Hospital was out of bounds thanks to greatly increased security; she anticipated that the identity-card idea would be extended to all the menial workers across Cormelle to better track down renegades like herself.

Spiros handily stole an electric cart – another reason why security measures would most probably be introduced soon – and they sat in the cab, driving into the very heart of Cormelle. Trying to camouflage her nerves, Martha gaily waved to all and sundry as they buzzed along, especially the black-suited policemen.

'Hide in plain sight, eh?' muttered Spiros. 'Clever lady, you are.'

'Wait till you meet the Doctor,' she gushed. 'He defines "clever".'

Wordlessly, Spiros arched an eyebrow.

'No,' she sighed. 'Not a chance. Not for lack of wishing, though,' she added, quietly. Her driver grinned.

Since Martha was now known to the Initiate, it wasn't possible to steal quietly inside the shabby old office block that the Initiates used.

'Is that important?' asked Spiros, dissecting a long centipede with rapid taps of his knife against the cab's plastic floor.

'Yes! Nothing would stop the Doctor from turning up unless they stopped him. Where's the logical place to keep him a prisoner? In their own little kingdom, where they can keep him isolated.'

Profoundly incorrect reasoning, even if it nevertheless led to a successful conclusion.

"Non-dampened transitional kinetic energy will seek out any unbounded laminar regions to radiate outwards as a vector potential of a magnitude decreased by the coefficient of expansion of the material - "

Jargon to some, gibberish to others, this technical phrasing came back to Martha from her AS level in Physics. She tried to explain to Spiros, hampered by twenty-ninth century language and a considerable gap in her recollection since further education. A sketch diagram in mid-air helped.

So, whilst they walked as quickly as discretion allowed to the north-east, their unmanned electric buggy headed straight for the Initiate's office block. It rolled faster than gravity allowed (courtesy of a stick wedged into the accelerator pedal), bumped over a loose flagstone and headed towards the old Light Engineering plant.

Looking back to check on progress, Martha's curse was impressive.

A cluster of weeds sprouting from chinks between another flagstone brought the electric cart back on course. It hammered into the external angle of the Initiate's office block, directly into the bare steel of a vertical structural member. With a dull resounding clang, a handful of panels across the whole block began to fall like cards from a pack.

The ones that Martha was interested in were directly opposite the corner where the buggy impacted. True to her hazy recollections of physics, a pair of man-high panels had sprung free and lay flat on the ground.

'Neat. Instant door,' said Spiros, pursing his lips in approval. Whilst angry Initiate members began to storm out of their building to see which idiot had run into them, Martha and Spiros ducked into the newly-accessible block out of sight of anyone.

From what Martha remembered, the Initiate's office block was mostly open-plan at the entrance, with a partition at the far end – that part of the building they were in now.

The room they stood in was for storing useless lumber; broken and smashed electronics equipment, computers, phones and other defunct items littered shelves and stacks, against the day when they would be either repaired, cannibalised for parts or thrown out.

The sole door led to another much smaller room, which had three tiers of shelving containing boxes of uniform size, each sporting a "Biohazard" logo. They were small enough to pick up single-handed, which is what Martha did.

'Is that wise?' hissed Spiros. ' "Biohazard" ?'

A whole argument ran across Martha's mind in an instant, which she dismissed equally quickly.

'Yes,' she replied, with as much intensity as she could muster.

Entry into the next room brought both intruders up short.

Five bodies lay arrayed on couches, amidst tables and scattered electronic gear. After the adrenaline surge of surprise wore off, Martha looked more closely. No, they weren't dead. Thin-film thermometers and blood pressure indicators were pressed onto their foreheads and they breathed in slow, regular patterns. If anything, they looked like patients sleeping off anaesthetics.

Silently, Spiros held up the limp forearm of one sleeper. A crimson circle stood out on the flesh.

'Hypo-spray mark. Happens when they struggle.'

Martha felt baffled again. Why stun five of their own members? And then hide them away in an office?

The door to this room opened out on the main, open-plan offices. Martha silently and slowly closed it, hoping that nobody had seen them. No hue or cry arose.

'No Doctor. Damn! I was certain they'd be keeping him here.'

Spiros examined each of the sleepers and in each case he found the tell-tale marks of pressure-injected anaesthetics.

'I can guess what happened. The Initiates set about your friend with spray-hypos, and he gave a good account of himself. These snoring slackers can't get taken to the Hospital or everyone would be asking why and how they ended up like this.'

_Where can he be? Where _can_ he be? I didn't think of any alternative. I've failed him!_

'There's another interesting thing,' mused Spiros, standing over one sleeper. 'They all have a small vertical scar at the back of their neck.'

Self-pity disappeared from Martha's mind, to be replaced by a keen medical curiosity. Kneeling by one of the sleepers enabled her to brush hair aside and check.

Yup. A decimetre-long scar positioned midway, between the levator scapulae. Carefully made, completely healed, and done about a year ago to judge by the degree of scar tissue whitening. She moved to another snoring body and checked again; this anaesthetic victim was a balding middle-aged man, so there was no obstructing hair to move.

There was very little in the way of scar tissue on this person, which made the raised nature of the scar puzzling. Experimentally, Martha touched the scar along it's length. Her skin crawled in sympathy.

'Time to go!' whispered Spiros, pointing at the door to the main office; footsteps were coming closer. Both intruders vanished behind the door and got to the outside before anyone came to track them down.

'Let's head for the shuttle hangar,' suggested Spiros. 'That's where they keep refugee's clothes. Steal some, ditch these serf suits. Then we can look for your partner.'

A suspicious ground crew member challenged them at the shuttle hangar. He'd been busy underneath a small, battered lifting body and neither had spotted him doing maintenance. Martha slyly looked around without seeming to: the fitter was the only person in the big, dingy hall.

Spiros cocked his head and nodded at the mechanic, indicating him with a thumb.

'See? If anyone asks you a question, fem, you answer them quick smart.'

The mechanic, wearing a ribbed blue boilersuit and therefore automatically higher in status than either of them, and swinging a large wrench in worrying fashion, came over to them.

'What are you doing in here? The Initiate are restricting movement of fishbellies.'

This was the first time Martha had encountered the insulting term. Spiros merely shrugged, doing a good impression of an obsequious minion.

'Sorry, Chief. They want the refugee clothes. Some talk of delayed-action chemical poisons.'

The mechanic wasn't convinced.

'Poisons!' he sneered. 'As if -'

'Should smoke be coming from that big aircraft?' asked Martha, innocently. With a startled squawk the mechanic whirled around. A sudden thudding hiss sounded and the big man collapsed in a heap.

Spiros tucked his knife away, looking in some awe at his companion, who held a spray-hypo that she'd applied to the man's carotid.

'Put that away!' she warned him. 'No killing.'

'You've got too many scruples,' the Ellenikan replied. 'Picked up from the sleeping beauties?'

She nodded. Always useful, having a stun-gun.

'Come on, let's find clothes. You can prove how gentlemanly you are by turning your back.'

He made a disappointed tut, redeemed by a cheeky smile.

Five minutes later two young people walked arm in arm, fancy-free, in the light of afternoon, chatting easily. They nodded and smiled at other passers-by, unremarkable and unremarked, heading for the big residential zone at the edge of the city centre.

'My cheeks are aching,' complained Spiros. 'This much smiling isn't normal.'

'Shut up and keep walking. And smiling. Think you can break into a home?'

Flowered verges and flagged walks divided up low-rise apartments and single bungalow dwellings. "New New York" proclaimed a blue plaque. "Site of original tent-city settlement". Peaceful and tranquil and the chintzy cover of a sinister secret.

The Ellenikan shrugged. From what he'd seen, crime wasn't a problem in Cormelle city. The black-clad police were rarely about in this part, and only slightly more often in the worker dorms he'd been housed in. The problem would be deciding which homes were empty. Waiting until evening would help, as occupied homes would turn on artificial lighting whilst the empty ones would remain dark.

Finding a bench dedicated to "Manny and Dean", the pair took up sentry station and waited. Martha used the time productively, reasoning about where the Doctor might be.

Power Tower; the dangerously decrepit ancient spaceship. They might imprison him there, hoping that radiation would kill him. More fool they! When Martha first met her Time Lord companion, he'd shrugged off a dose of gamma radiation that fried a killer android from the inside out, shrugged it off the way she might massage away cramp in her foot.

Then again, the Initiate did have a whole city to hide him in. A whole city, and the miniature nation beyond that. They could have him tied-up in a fall-out shelter, or bundled in a basement underneath one of the light factories out there to the west.

On the other hand –

'Where do you hide a needle?'

'Eh?' replied Spiros, taken aback and grateful not to have to smile any more. 'I don't know. Is that doctor humour?'

Martha rolled her eyes. Apparently her twenty-first century sayings were unknown in the future.

'From the evidence, they stunned the Doctor with anaesthetics. Yes? He's unconscious. Where would an unconscious man not look out of place?'

Spiros narrowed his eyes.

'Ah. I see. In the same place a needle looks at home, amongst it's own. He's in the Hospital.'

That created problems. Despite their change of plumage, neither could risk approaching the hospital again for fear of capture. Security guards, identity cards and a camera system all meant they had to stay away. Spiros couldn't see any route in unless they stole heavy earth-moving plant and bulldozed their way into the hospital, literally, which would doubtless injure or kill patients and staff. He was willing to try this approach but doubted whether the slightly squeamish Martha would allow him –

A sudden crack brought him back to the present. Martha had contorted her fingers into an unstable arrangement that yielded a peculiar snapping sound when she moved them abruptly.

'Yes you have my attention,' he informed her, sarcastically.

'I need to know dimensions. Distances, number of steps, height of risers, thickness of walls. Can you come up with those?'

'Before or after breaking into a home?'

'This is far more important - I need to be able to calculate accurately for the TARDIS!'

Martha used a sketch map she'd drawn with measurements added by Spiros as a reference. This would be her map in order to correctly estimate the distance to the secret chamber behind High Maintenance. She silently thanked her absent guide for having shown her a few, basic functions of the timeship; for safety reasons only travel in space, not time. If she got the spatial operation wrong, then at worst she'd end up astray, although possibly by as much as a hundred kilometres. Messing up temporal co-ordinates could crack Hargreave's Fall like a rotten apple.

She made the calculations, set the rotor controls, checked her measurements, skirted the rotor, checked every dial, readout, tell-tale and monitor again and crossed her fingers. Spiros, of course, was completely useless, standing goggling at the cathedral-like interior of the timeship and flicking his hand in that odd, unique gesture.

Martha reached for the lever. If she threw that, then the TARDIS would begin to operate, and operate irreversibly. From hints the Doctor had dropped, she knew that the timeship had failsafes built into it's operation. It wouldn't materialise completely or partially inside a solid object, for example, regardless of which co-ordinates were selected. It would automatically select a level landing site and arrive at exactly ground level – no falling for the last ten feet in this police box.

Worse than her first driving lesson. She looked up at Spiros.

'Fingers crossed and wish me luck!'

_Luck_? he almost blurted out. _We need _luck _to work this device?_

She threw the lever, the time rotor wheezed up and down, then stopped.

'Is it broken?'

Martha, scowling at this implied criticism, pointed at the big external monitor.

Instead of the city's small airport, the view showed a dark chamber illuminated only by the instrument panels on a large coffin-shaped box with a semi-opaque convex cover.

'Bingo! Exactly where we want to be.'

Spiros stared back at her.

'How can you have this technology back in the twenty-first century? This is pure science-fiction!'

She waved a finger at him.

'Too long a story. The TARDIS belongs to the Doctor, and he's from the future. And Gallifrey, but he doesn't like talking about that.'

Taking a heavy rubber-coated torch, they ventured out beyond the doors of the timeship and examined the room. Yes, it was the mysterious room of suspended-animation cabinets. The torch revealed that the previously-occupied cabinets were empty. The sole occupied cabinet revealed the calm, composed features of the Doctor, who failed to waken when Martha beat a frenzied tattoo on the cover with the torch.

'Forget that. He's in suspended animation. It'll take more than a princess's kiss to wake him up.'

'Do you know how to?'

'Me! What do I look like, a surgeon?'

Martha turned back to the cabinet with foreboding. So close, so far away. They might be able to crack the cabinet open, which might kill the sus-an subject inside. Did you have to bring them round from what appeared to be an artificial coma before you opened the cabinet? Or did they recover naturally once the cover was opened? Or did you open the cabinet and then revive them? If so, how?

She turned to inform Spiros, and found the Ellenikan herding two medical staff into the cabinet room at the point of his knife, taken prisoner from the High Maintenance Suite.

'Here's a surgeon,' he stated, closing the door and giving the internal control panel a hearty wallop from the haft of his knife. The panel cracked and spat sparks across the gloom, sputtering and hissing as it died. 'Who's going to stay in here to help.'

Both the medical staff wore one-piece disposables, with face-masks and bonnets. From what little remained visible, Martha could tell one was extremely angry, the other extremely scared.

'I will not!' raged the angry person. 'I - '

His righteous indignation was cut short when Spiros dug the tip of his knife, vertically, into the underside of the surgeon's chin and gently tugged him over to the sus-an cabinet. The tip was no more than a couple of millimetres deep but it compelled physical obedience. Once that movement had been accomplished, Spiros walked back to the scared nurse.

'Wake him up, doctor. If you choose not to, I'll gut your assistant like a trout.'

To prove his point, he balanced the knife upright, point first, on his palm, then moved his hand in an incredibly swift half-circle that span the blade along it's axis, caught the knife handle and slashed backwards at the unfortunate nurses' paper suit. A long diagonal tear, from her collar to stomach, appeared. The nurse shrieked in alarm and embarrassment, clutched the edges of the torn fabric to her and began to cry. Amazingly, no blood appeared.

Ashen-faced, the surgeon went to work on the cabinet's control panel with shaky fingers.

'I don't know what you hope to achieve by this,' he blustered. 'Threatening to kill!'

Spiros sniggered unpleasantly and stroked one edge of his blade without slicing any flesh.

'What do you take me for! That's a paper suit. I used the blunt side of the knife.'

Martha used the torch at close range to inspect the surgeon's neck. Sure enough, there was the scar. An Initiate. So much for platitudes about killing!

The sus-an cabinet cover swung upwards like a clamshell.

'The recovery process is slow and complex - ' began the surgeon, assuming a semi-pompous air.

Abruptly, making everyone jump, the Doctor sat upright.

'Brilliant! Thanks, Martha! and you too, Spiros. Now, let's get to work. Make with the busy-busy.'


	17. Chapter 17

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The external scanner showed a landscape of incipient crops, brilliantly bright bi-solar sunlight, a massy and crumbling tower of masonry covered with weeds, and no people.

'This. This,' declared the Doctor, in tones that brooked no discussion, 'was the border between Cormelle and Wardebeke. Until the Breakdown. After which the border moved a long way distant.'

'Why are we here?' asked Martha.

'An illustration. An example. I'm going to move the TARDIS spatially for a distance of fifty – Spiros? Are you still with us?'

The young man physically recalled himself to reality and the present, shaking his head. By the time he had cleared his perceptions, the external scanner showed the trunks of trees, a floor covered in pine needles to a depth of at least half a metre, and the hint of running water beyond the trunks. This was where the Time Lord had encountered the Splenacosaur, a location he already knew fairly well and with advantages that would become obvious if a particular event he anticipated took place.

'Ah – yes. As together an I can be.'

Supernatural explanations aside, Spiros still couldn't see how he had been correctly identified by a man who'd spent the last few hours in a suspended animation unit. The delectably clever Martha said that the Doctor was an especially observant alien, humanoid whilst not human, capable of pulling a rabbit out of a hat when it had never been there in the first place.

'Okay, we're now outside the barrier, outside Cormelle and outside any likelihood of their searching for us. By my estimates Cormelle has tripled in size since the Breakdown, expanding into territory that used to belong to other polities, who aren't around to object any longer.'

Briefly, skating over a few of the more unpleasant details, he told them about his adventures in the lands beyond before and after the sinister repulsor impulse had been delivered. Spiros looked glum, and with good reason: his elder brother was astray in the outer wilderness and by now was probably a mindlessly-aggressive psychopath, latched onto the nearest community – or killed by that very same community.

'We found out a few odd things about the Initiate,' said Martha. 'From a group we discovered lying asleep in the Intiate's offices.'

The Doctor wasn't paying attention. Instead he juggled a small, vacuum-wrapped box that displayed bio-hazard signs on each side. Borrowing Spiros' knife, he carefully sliced the wrapping away.

'That's where we got that from, too,' added Martha. 'Off a set of shelves. Doctor, are you - '

'Yes I am. From the Initiate offices? That's daft. Why would you store hazardous material in an office without any specialised containment?'

Using the knife and sticking his tongue out with concentration, he twisted the blade suddenly and forcefully. The box's top flew away into a corner as the Doctor reached into it and removed a small, elaborately enscrolled cylinder the size of a little finger.

'Interesting!' he mused, whipping out a pair of spectacles and peering closely at the small object. 'A Brancuso Broadcaster.' He'd suspected it since Ian Brinklove's unconscious scratching of his neck.

Whipping the glasses off with equal speed, he turned on a heel and stared at Martha.

'You found the scars of surgical implantation on those people I – ah – sent to dreamland.'

A statement, not a question.

'What's a Brancuso Broadcaster?' asked Spiros, utterly adrift in a conversation that seemed to be half unspoken and wholly beyond him.

The Doctor held one of the small rods aloft.

'Spiros, Martha – say hello to the Initiate.'

Of course he had their attention after that. Equally, he needed to explain it to them, or at least part of the explanation. Privately he suspected a self-sustaining enslavement similar to that of the Gonds, those friendly primitives exploited unto death by the moral-free Krotons.

'Thanks to the suspended animation I got some real thinking time in. No distractions at all.'

Pre-Breakdown the thrust of research in Cormelle had been along the lines of empathic repulsor technology. That constituted the negative side of the technology – repulsion, which had been vouchsafed him during his hallucinations in Wardebeke. The inverse had also been under examination: empathic attraction. The Doctor knew this area from psychokinesiologists on Walden, a century before and galaxies away. The small rods, actually transparent and displaying fantastically complicated internal geometry, would be surgically implanted into Initiate members and broadcast a physiological signal when they interacted at close range. Thus, the implanted would always know who was an Initiate member without any external indications.

This puzzled Martha, but the more cynical and suspicious Spiros understood straight away. Not knowing who was an Initiate member meant you had to keep your mouth shut or risk being disappeared if you mouthed any objections to the lack of democracy, refugees' menial status, what the real cause of the Breakdown Effect might be, and so on. The original members, those who had been the city state's movers and shakers, they were universally known, but since the first days of the Breakdown a lot more had joined, and very few of them were known to the public.

So, the Brancuso Broadcasters stayed very firmly out of public view to avoid awkward questions. After all, there was a practical limit to the number of people the Initiate could freeze at any one time and the largely-faceless manipulators of the polity still constituted only a fraction of the total population.

The most welcome aspect of being free from Cormelle for Spiros was food: he could easily empty the fridge in a single sitting if allowed to, after his frugal and unsatisfying diet of stolen vegetables. He viewed the Doctor with a mingling of awe and mild anxiety, not convinced that the Timelord didn't have any psychic abilities. Despite this he still broached that vexed subject – what to do next.

'I'm not leaving the Fall until the Initiate are gone, and I'll not leave their perverted technology intact, either,' stated the Doctor. He didn't invite discussion on the matter.

'That's going to be extremely difficult,' said Martha. 'I'm not trying to stop you!' she hastily added when her companion's piercing gaze swung round to her. 'Just look at the facts. There's only three of us. We have no weapons. The Initiate are all over Cormelle and we don't know who a fraction of them are. To keep away from being hunted, we're in the danger zone if they set off the Breakdown impulse again. Not only that, everyone else – okay, nearly everyone else – in Cormelle thinks it's a saintly paradise on earth where the rulers can't do any wrong. Nobody will help us!'

'Then we shall help ourselves. Oh – as a doctor in waiting, how's your surgical stitching?'

Whilst in the TARDIS they were safe from the impulse that sent other people insane. Or, that is, Spiros and Martha were safe. This restricted their ability to manage any meaningful action and might have been a major drag on their stated intentions, had the city-state not taken action itself.

The two young people were under stern instructions from the Doctor to stay in the TARDIS, recuperate by eating lots of nice food (not a problem for Spiros!) and avoid leaving. He himself needed to get out into the open in order to boost his metabolism with a great deal of fresh air; surviving ordeal by radiation, massive doses of anaesthetic and suspended animation had taken a toll, quite beside nearly being poisoned by killer hallucinogens. This slow process took place over several days, with the Doctor spending long hours leaning against a tree, looking to the east and the distant towers of Cormelle's centre. He completely stumped Martha by asking about her abilities as a seamstress, then took advantage of her puzzled reply.

Thus, he was the first to detect the signs of what he first thought were the Initiate hunting him down, even if that seemed very counter-intuitive. As had been the case so many centuries before, a sonic boom split the air above the copse as an aircraft arrowed it's way westwards, to become a fading dot on the horizon.

A gradually increasing thrumming roar, that resounded from his heels upwards, caught the Doctor's attention. The vibration increased very slowly.

_Earthquake? Vulcanism? Ultra-violent storms inducted up from the great circle latitudes?_

Rather than speculate fruitlessly, he crossed the copse and peered out to the east, using his tweaked telescope.

'Hah!' he snapped, understanding immediately.

Away on the plains, heavy earth-moving plant was approaching. Big, battered, ancient autonomic equipments from the original landing, to judge from their patina and obsolescence, interspersed with more recently-built human-operated vehicles.

'Let me guess,' he said aloud, talking in order to firm-up his ideas. 'Plan A: you created an entirely new Repulsor and intend to place it kilometres from here all around Cormelle, or you are going to disinter the old one, add a few hundred kilometres and repeat Part A.'

Time, as ever, was short and needed efficient utilisation.

'Time to stop slobbing around, children,' he announced to the two bored young people, back in the TARDIS.

'I like that!' retorted Martha. 'Sitting here twiddling our thumbs and doing nothing but eat – I'm going to need Weightwatchers at this rate!'

Keeping silent, Spiros looked to the external scanner. The Doctor thoughtfully oriented it to display the construction equipment moving towards them.

'Do we need to move?' asked Spiros.

'No. All that hardware is going to create a new, larger empathic repulsor. Either they have it palletted-up already in sections, or they're going to move the old one and add to it, or a combination of the two. I chose this spot because it allows us to stay hidden whilst keeping an eye on them.'

With a flash of insight, Martha understood why they'd stopped off at that crumbling customs post defining the old border between polities; the very same process of expansion that occurred then was taking place now. Cormelle's Initiate were extending their rule over lands they had no real right to.

The process of "Force Barrier" transfer and increase took place at speed. Partly due to long practice, partly due to the participants not wanting to leave themselves vulnerable to any roving lunatics with weapons, and doubtless also due in certain proportion to members of the Initiate who could recognise each other without informing the world at large. Whilst the Cormellettes worked Martha and Spiros took turns observing via the Doctor's telescope and writing up notes: "Increased use of VTOL shuttles" "Pre-loaded pallets of cabling" "Ancient bulldozer lost in stream" "Misc. parties observed loitering with intent" "Lots of white boilersuits working on digging and relocating" "Ancient and dead bulldozer used as bridge trestle".

'I recognise them. The so-called "miscellaneous parties".

They weren't anything of the sort. Spiros recognised the swagger and strut of mercenaries, mercenaries who no longer had any reason to fear the brain-scrambling effects of the Breakdown. They moved in plain clothes, no more than half a dozen to a party, and no more than half a dozen parties at any one time, yet they were all armed. Small arms, concealable at the best of times, nothing likely to advertise the presence of unloved, unwanted and un-necessary free-lancers.

'Are you sure?' asked Martha. 'Mercenaries in Cormelle is unique. Their normal police can handle nearly everything.'

Except the Doctor, she nearly added.

'Not this time round,' said the Doctor from three inches behind her head, making her jump in alarm, bewildered that he could approach so silently over the pine-needle floor.

Shaking out the old map of Wardebeke he'd been given an age ago, both young people witnessed his sketching a dotted line on the laminate, only a few kilometres from the first devastated township of that unhappy polity. Next, he put the map down on the carpet of pine-needles.

'Basic geometry. I've been keeping watch on where those shuttles are heading for, and that dotted line is it. That's where the new "force barrier" is being set up.'

Spiros looked at the dots, which created practically a straight line. No curvature at all, which implied that the circle it was part of had a very large diameter.

The Doctor pointed to the TARDIS, metres away behind them.

'That represents Cormelle on this scale. I can only approximate, without having accurate info, but my calculation is that this expansion will increase the polity's size to five times it's present area. Major expansion, big job, lots of work involved. Repulsor out of action for days, perhaps weeks, so to cover such a large area with so many potentially armed and dangerous hostiles -'

He stopped and looked at Martha.

'They bring in mercenaries for "Guard duties". When their real job will be hunting us down.'

Spiros looked back at the scattered groups of soldiers.

'Not necessarily. More to prevent us from getting back in. Look, they're setting up tents.'

With a minimum of horseplay a series of small foil tents were being pitched whilst Alpha began to set, half a dozen of the conical items being set around a small campfire. Barely visible in the distance, another set of tents went up. Figures, dappled in shadows and now wearing camouflage fatigues, began to patrol between the encampments.

The Time Lord looked on this activity with a frown of worry. Why patrol so far back from the new frontier line? He answered his own question; because the ring of sensors were still in place where the old barrier had lain, and would serve as excellent detection devices were the trio to try sneaking back into Cormelle. Not only that, he strongly suspected they would detect the TARDIS should they try to get back in dematerialised form. Basic causality prevented him from moving the timeship in the fourth dimension, so that method was out. Persuading Spiros of this took long minutes of convoluted mathmatical proofs, all of which went for nothing until Martha laid a sincere hand on the young man's shoulder.

'If the Doctor says we can't do that, we can't do it. Trust me on this.'

As Beta dropped below the horizon and darkness arrived, the trio returned to their timeship. By sleight of hand, starlight amplification circuitry and keen vision, the main scanner was turned upon the nearest minor encampment. The picture swam and danced, and was in shades of washed-out grey until the Doctor kicked the central rotor with a warning tut. The picture stopped wavering.

'Interesting,' he mused. The trench that had previously contained the repulsor lay deep and wide on the side of the tents nearest them. Two and a half metres wide and too deep to determine the bottom in dusk and poor picture resolution. 'Quite a barrier.'

'I could jump it,' opined Martha. 'Given a good run up.'

Whipping out a pair of spectacles, the Doctor pored over the scanner at close range, mouth open and tongue sticking out in comic concentration.

'No you couldn't,' he quietly responded. 'The far side is much higher than this side. They must have cantilevered the overburden when excavating.'

Not all of the old repulsor had been excavated and removed, merely enough to make crossing the old perimeter very difficult. By next nightfall the trench bottom would be set with wooden spikes.

Yet – they had to get across. Had to! The Doctor promised himself he was going to destroy the Initiate and their repellent machinery, utterly, and simultaneously. If he didn't manage both together, they would simply repair their engine of insanity and carry on again.

Going back five hundred years took a degree of mental stretching and the palimpset memories of five previous regenerations.

How had the original encampment stood, all those centuries ago? Roger had been anxious to establish a power plant, which probably amounted to the rusted relic of Power Tower nowadays. That had meant a local resource. So had – what had the colonists been so keen to locate?

Water.

Taken from aquiferous shale deposits. Potable water for the colonists, for their livestock, for sanitation, cleaning, cooking and as First Level power plant coolant. They would have sunk piping into the bedrock of Hargreaves Fall and used artesian water found there in the aquifers.

Yes. Five hundred years-worth of endless piping liquids away would have drained those shale layers of water into barren dryness. Ergo, there ought to be dry layers of rock leading back to Cormelle's city centre, passable by anyone thin enough, if they could get at those layers in the first place.

If, that is, you could tolerate the radioactivity in those run-off channels thanks to the recent Northcoping nuke, and the long half-life deposits washed there from a dozen years of atomic warfare, and the chemical toxicity of the soil itself, polluted with Strontium and Caesium isotopes.

If!

Pondering, the Doctor looked at the TARDIS ceiling without seeing it. The trio needed to get into the centre of Cormelle without being detected. Not only that, they needed to sabotage the very fabric of the city state in order to bring it down. Whilst also tackling the Initiate. Without bringing in any contact from the general population at large. And not getting caught by the mercenary patrols.

Spiros had given up on getting any sense out of the strangely-behaving Time Lord and took a long look at Cormelle beyond the stream.

'Can we move in a hurry if anyone accidentally discovers us?'

Martha shrugged.

'I think the Doctor wants us to stay here while he goes into the city. We'll be safe.'

For what had to be the hundredth time, Spiros looked incredulous.

'Safe! I don't see how you work that out. This thing is made of wood on the outside, however high-tec it is on the inside. You should live in fear of carpenters. And woodworm.'

The young woman rolled her eyes.

'It's programmed neutronium. Made to look like wood. Practically indestructible.'

She got a snort in response.

'Hey, did you see that explosion from the nuclear-tipped anti-aircraft missile Northcoping fired at us?'

'Course I did. You couldn't miss – hey, they fired that at you?'

'Dead right. Went off a few hundred metres from us. No affect on the TARDIS at all.'

Martha felt a sense of proprietary pride in the time-ship's performance and appearance, even if she had nothing at all to do with either. Spiros found that his grasp of the incredible needed to be enlarged if he were to cope with his partners. The Doctor felt the need to carry out a hydrogeology schematic. With a moment's reflection, the schematic became a three-dimensional model.

All three of the timeship's inhabitants looked at the byzantine construct with a mixture of awe and wonder. Most obvious of all was the three-metre diameter circular plastic tank that stood man-high to one side of the TARDIS on a pair of mahogany trestles. A rippling layer of dark-grey ran around the whole area of the plastic tank, mirrored at a decimetre higher by another layer of dark-grey, sandwiching a dark blue liquid. An empty egg-carton lay on the top layer, with a drinking straw standing upright in it's middle. The Doctor looked on with pride at his model, clutching a handful of straws, a bamboo cooking skewer and a pair of ornate Art Deco scissors. An empty plastic bucket stood next to the mahogany trestles.

'Very nice,' said Spiros, mockingly. 'What is it?'

'Cormelle.'

Martha nodded, catching the young man's eye as he pursed his lips.

'Welllll, not just Cormelle the city-state, the aquifer below it as well.'

Of course the Doctor had an advantage. He'd been here before, even if it was five centuries previously, so he knew the lie of the land, literally.

Leaning over the cylinder's rim, the Doctor pushed the straw firmly down into the plasticene, at least six inches deep. It squeaked as it grated past the hole cut for it in the egg-carton.

Nothing happened. Spiros bit his lip to avoid laughing, but the Doctor hadn't finished. Wielding the bamboo skewer, he poked it down the straw to dislodge the plug of plasticene at it's end. Blue liquid came welling up from the layer he'd tapped into, flowing freely from the straw and over the surface of the plasticene, turning the egg-carton into a soggy mass of papier-mache. Slowly the upward flow of water lessened and ceased, leaving a fraction of the original amount in the space between the two plasticene layers.

Kicking the bucket and turning a valve, the Doctor drained the blue liquid away from the tank. He then cut his handful of straws into short lengths, barely long enough to pierce the top layer of plasticene. He thrust each of these dozen mini-straws into the top layer at an angle before emptying a phial of liquid into the bucket and then carefully emptying half of the bucket into the tank.

The bucket's contents, now an electric green, sloshed into the tank, then began to drain into the nearly empty chamber between the layers of plasticene. The resulting mix became a noxious, bilious yellow.

Whipping out his spectacles, the Time Lord peered at the nasty, scummy liquid. He positioned the bucket at an apparently random point below the tank, then applied his sonic screwdriver at super-hertz frequency against the tank wall. With a musical _ping!_ a small hole less than a centimetre across appeared in the plastic. This seemed to please the Doctor, as he took his glasses off at speed and began to lock drinking straws together. Once he had a length of over a metre assembled, he painstakingly began to inch it through the hole in the tank wall, until a swirl in the yellow liquid caught his eye. Once again he poked the plasticene free from the straw with a bamboo skewer and gloppy yellow liquid drained out of the chamber and into the bucket whilst the Doctor stood aside and timed it, clashing the blades of his scissors together once per second.

'Er – what have we been watching?' asked Martha. 'Normally, I like Blue Peter. I don't see any sticky-backed plastic here today.'

A mystified Spiros looked between both travellers.

'Splendid programme. Binding ethos for generations of children. Noakes-Singleton-Purvis the classic line-up. Oh! – sorry, the reason for this? It's a model.'

'Well, _duh!_' replied Martha, rolling her eyes.

'Not that kind of model. A mathematical model. A schematic. Gives me an idea of timing, volumes, distances, angles.'

Any abstraction of manner, any vagueness or ambiguity vanished as the Doctor turned to face Spiros, who felt like a specimen on a slide under that unforgiving gaze.

'Do you know any artificial lakes beyond Cormelle's city perimeter, with a large surface area yet very very shallow?'

'Ah – er – I - '

'Never mind.' The Doctor produced his now creased, dirty and frayed pocket map of Cormelle and surrounding polities. True to his guesswork, a small lake to the north-west of the city bore the legend "Great Northern Lake". 'Found it.' He'd heard it mentioned in passing several days ago.

The spark behind all these mental gymnastics had been his emergence from that Cormelle fall-out shelter into a clammy, saturated city environment where fall-out had been washed away. That, and the original colonists of five hundred years ago.

Back then the settlers had been in desperate need of water. They had settled down on that particular part of Hargreave's Fall because satellite survey proved it to have subterranean layers of rock saturated with water – aquifers. The colonists needed water for sanitation and sewage, to ensure that a tent community of ten thousand people didn't suffer from communicable diseases; they needed water for drinking, since in a new binary sun system their homeworld would be significantly higher at ambient temperature than good old Terra; they needed to succour their livestock and crops; they needed coolant for their infant power plants. Water, water, water.

So they had bored artesian wells into the bedrock, located water-bearing shales and piped that water up aboveground for a couple of centuries. Eventually it had run dry. Before that unhappy day the Cormellettes constructed their own irrigation system and brought in water from further afield, from sources the original colonists could only have wished for – distant rivers and reservoirs. Now the old underground chamber had a different purpose, as a decanting tank. When fallout or warbugs or poison gasses dropped onto Cormelle, the irrigation system flushed those dangerous substances back underground into the dessicated aquifer. Since sitting on a million cubic metres of poison would have been unhealthy, to say the least, a tunnel had been dug out to the nearest low-lying ground, north-east of the polity. Dropping (here a guess from his model – six inches every hundred yards) from the level of Cormelle to the artificial lake, the contaminated waters formed a large, shallow pond. Presumably it would be covered with layers of boron, activated charcoal and intelligent bonding agents once the water evapourated and the toxic residuum was left behind.

'That's my way in,' he explained, pointing at the chemical lake and tracing a route back to Cormelle. He skated lightly over the difficulties in getting there, which, he reflected afterwards, was a mistake.

'Your way in seems to be several kilometres in length, Doctor,' observed Spiros.

'Not to mention full of radioactive mud!' added Martha.

'When I said "my way" I wasn't parroting Frank. I'm going in alone. On my own.'

The radioactive part of the route argued for him: he was immune; they weren't.

The Doctor didn't enlarge on what he intended to do once he got back into Cormelle, since the process of getting there would be difficult and involved enough on it's own. In fact he rather hoped Spiros and Martha would be too bothered with how to get him to the Great Northern Lake unseen to worry about what came after. "Setting myself up to be publicly martyred" might not go down too well with Martha, who seemed to treasure his continued existence.

Their night-time sleep might have been disturbed if the TARDIS had been equipped with an IFF system. Since it did not, the flights of shuttles and other aircraft heading from all points of the compass to Cormelle passed un-noticed.

At second sunrise next morning, Martha turned the scanner onto the terrain opposite them, the mercenary camp. Just to see what the enemy might be planning and plotting.

Which site seemed to have been eating it's breakfast Oaties. From a small encampment it had suddenly become – and a quick count ensued – fifty tents.

Turning back from the scanner, Martha didn't jump out of her skin, quite, since the Doctor had been demonstrating his ability to sneak up on people recently,. She looked into his eyes at a distance of less than a hands-breadth.

'Oh – there's a lot more of them today,' she ventured. 'Hard to get through.'

A wicked gleam shone from her companion's eyes.

'Nothing worthwhile is attained without struggle. The bigger the challenge, the bigger the win.'


	18. Chapter 18

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The Doctor was worried, even if he didn't show it.

The Initiate must have been recruiting far and wide to have brought this many mercenaries back to Cormelle. To what end? Far too many to mount a simple perimeter guard. Given the sensor net, a handful of mercs with jet transport could patrol the old perimeter quite effectively. Perhaps the Initiate were anticipating the worst, expecting him to amass an army from the survivors in nearby polities. Or – no, time to worry about that if or when he got back into the city-state.

Anyway, he needed to get moving now, before the private armies beyond the stream began to organise for clear-and-sweep operations or sent out nosing patrols to see what local resources they could steal.

'This is unusual, you know,' he chattered to the two young people whilst packing a rucksack. 'My experience is more along the lines of helping from the inside, in communities under siege. This is quite the opposite.'

His final instructions were clear and explicit.

'Do NOT leave the TARDIS! You're perfectly safe in here. Outside is dangerous.'

'How long will you be gone?' asked Martha, well aware of the danger outside.

A shrug from her fellow-traveller.

'Ooooh, dunno. Couple of days at the most. Trust me, you'll know when I'm done.'

Alpha and Beta were not yet at zenith. The morning still felt hot, and the resurrected mercenary uniform he wore retained heat sufficiently to make him sweat. That was why the rucksack carried nine bottles of water (plus one of sodium hydroxide). His route wasn't straightforward, either, and added to the length of overall journey. Firstly, he needed to avoid being seen from the far side of the stream if possible, without seeming to be avoiding being seen, which meant diversions to accommodate dips or rises in the ground where there was no jungle cover. Secondly, when in potential view of witnesses, he needed to be moving in a direction that implied he'd finished whatever he'd been doing on the far bank and was heading back to camp. Thirdly, he needed to move rapidly whilst looking casual. Twice he hid in undergrowth when aircraft came winging to or from Cormelle, just in case.

At an estimated five miles per hour, he'd been going for five hours before the old perimeter and it's mercenary attendants fell behind him. Only another fifteen miles to go, he judged, finishing the third bottle of water and replacing it in the rucksack – being ecologically sensible and also ensuring nothing remained to indicate his travel. The abundant jungle began to thin out, eventually petering away into scrubby rolling grasslands.

He smelt Great Northern Lake, that giant settling-pond, before he saw it. A bitter, dry scent came on the wind, redolent of chemicals. Chlorine, yes, and a trace of carbon. Ah! That would be charcoal, scattered to absorb poisons.

The small lake was lime-green in colour, with dancing rainbow patterns shooting across the surface as wind rippled the slimey, toxic wastes. The latest run-off dealing with Northcoping's fallout had left a layer of water over the previous wastes, he guessed. In a few days the water would have evapourated entirely and sprayer aircraft from Cormelle would fly over it and dump chemicals to render it inert.

Awkward. Approximately ten hectares of poisonous glop. Picking up a fist-sized stone, the Doctor hefted and threw it, calculating the depth to be barely twenty centimetres. Of course, under the waters lay a bottom of mud, which could be just as deep, or deeper, and undoubtedly toxic if stirred up by idiots wading into it.

'Gotcha!' he exclaimed, picking out the dark black funnel of the drainage pipe he was looking for. It projected from mid-way up the distant bank of the lake, a metre-long pipe comfortably big enough to crawl into, situated above a great slab of concrete sticking up out of the stagnant water, that served to break up the outfall and prevent excessive erosion. A tiny trickle of water came dribbling out of the pipe, dripping onto the concrete and making it slippery.

A long walk round the banks brought the Doctor to a point directly above the pipe, where he got a nasty surprise: a small inflatable boat had tied up to a reinforcing rod that jutted out from the concrete block. The boat was painted in camouflage colours and lay in the shadows, which is why he hadn't seen it. Looking closer revealed narrow-bore piping tied to the boat, a pipe that continued up the bank, onto dry land and ran off behind him. Liquids could be seen being pumped up the piping.

A throat cleared loudly behind him, and the Doctor took pains to turn slowly with his hands clearly visible.

Three men, wearing smart-art camo-suits and thus hard to make out, stood up from where they had been sitting, in a hollow around a set of industrial drums that were being filled with piped poison slurry. A fourth man remained sitting, which meant only his outline could be seen.

'Kill 'im now?' asked one of the mercenaries. A long, jagged, rusty blade appeared in mid-air from beneath the camouflage cape.

'What happened to honour amongst thieves?' asked the Doctor, cross at not taking more precautions.

One of the soldiers threw back his hood, revealing a wide-eyed stare, cracked lips and perpetually working jaws.

'Watch your tongue before we cut it out!' he hissed, dribbling.

'Oh, sorry, I'll just be going then, shall I?'

These weren't mercenaries from Cormelle. No. These were wandering, footloose mercenaries sent into a frenzy by the Breakdown signal, liable to kill any outsider they came across without a first thought, let alone a second.

'Kill 'im now!' stated the first one, no longer merely asking. The Doctor wondered if he'd have time to leap backwards, dive down the bank and into that inflatable before these maniacs with knives turned him into a Gallifreyan shish-kebab. Slowly, trying not to make them react any faster, he moved backwards.

The precaution seemed wasted. The fourth, hitherto silent, mercenary blurted out an exclamation, jumping to his feet. He swung a heavy, compact automatic weapon from beneath his cape, raising it high –

- before smashing it into the neck of his nearest comrade, who collapsed in a heap. Startled, the Doctor stopped his own retreat. One of the trio turned back, to suffer an agonising kick in the stomach that bundled him up, and was then hit smartly on the neck with the gun's stock. The last of the threesome turned his back to the Doctor, who promptly ducked down behind him. The mercenary fell backwards and rolled over the edge of Settling Pond, hitting the waters below with a muted, slushy thud. He struggled upright, floundering and spluttering with rage, trying to unbuckle his cape to reach a nasty-looking Schmeisser acceleration pistol.

A large, dull-green blur shot past the Doctor's head, making him start in alarm. He looked down in time to see the partly-full drum bounce off the mercenary's head, leaving a large dent in both objects. The mysterious fourth man took pains to roll both his unconscious comrades over the bank. All three lay in an untidy, spattered heap.

'Er – thank you. I think.'

The mercenary threw back his hood, revealing dark features blurred by stubble, and an outstanding personal identification.

'You don't half manage to get yourself into trouble, Doctor,' said Petros Vendrakos, his artificial eye bland as ever, the remaining one crinkled with malicious amusement.

The Doctor insisted on hauling the three unconscious victims out of the churned-up slush, tying them up with lengths of plastic piping. Petros explained his progress since they had split up.

He had picked up his younger brother's trail from other mercenaries, using a combination of bribery and threats, and tracked him across the northern hemisphere, realising that Spiros was heading for Cormelle. As the planetary sanctuary it wasn't much of a leap of intuition. He was only recently arrived in the area, and had hit upon the idea of storing the poisonous slurry from Settling Pond as a method of approaching the Cormelle boundary.

'Trade with the perimeter guards for entry. It might work, it might not, all I needed was to get across their barrier.'

Then the Breakdown Effect intervened.

'You seem singularly unaffected by the Effect,' observed the Doctor.

Petros shrugged.

'It knocked me sick for half an hour, that was it. In my travel I've found other people who were immune. I must be as well.' Indicating the three still comatose mercenaries with his thumb, he continued. 'Completely off their heads, but useful for dealing with other Breakdown lunatics. Now, that's my story - what are _you_ doing here?'

Before replying, the Doctor unpacked his greatcoat from the depths of his rucksack and put it on.

'Going along that pipe below us.'

Petros whistled in appreciation.

'Incidentally, your younger brother is no longer in Cormelle.'

Immediately Petros looked alarmed.

'He's not! That puts him at risk from the Breakdown - '

The Doctor shook his head.

'He's quite safe. Secure in my TARDIS. And there won't be any Breakdown Effect whilst the Cormellettes are fiddling about with their so-called "force barrier".'

Petros stared, leaning forward slightly. This led to a short explanation about the TARDIS.

'Yes, yes, I've heard the legends,' interrupted Petros. 'Gallifreyan chronomimetics. Supposedly using white dwarf matter as a structural base.'

Interesting! mused the Time Lord, reminding himself that he faced an intelligent and well-educated man, who only happened to look like a soldier-for-hire.

'That's not what got my attention. You imply that the force-field is related to the Breakdown Effect?'

During this explanation there were no interruptions. Instead, the Ellenikan's face moved from astonishment to outrage, until he hissed a savage curse, spat on the ground, folded his arms and stood silent, in the grip of strong emotions.

'As I said, I'm using the pipe to get to Cormelle undiscovered. The last time I went in openly the Initiate tried to kill me.'

'You need an escort.'

'I don't. Also, I'm quite immune to radiation.'

'Me too. Temporarily. The nanobots in my bloodstream will protect me for a couple of months longer.'

Those nanobots would be one of the "procedures" he'd hinted about back on the _El Arish_.

'If you come with me, you don't kill.' A flat statement without any discussion allowed. The other man pointed at the three bound mercenaries.

'It would have been easier to kill them than immobilise them. I don't take life lightly. But I reserve the right to self-defence.'

Shrugging in acceptance, the Doctor turned and walked to the edge of the bank, then jumped down onto the pipe, then from the pipe to the slippery concrete block beneath it. Petros followed, carrying a long length of rolled-up plastic piping slung over a shoulder. He gave the Time Lord a boost up into the pipe, then got an assist himself.

An eerie blue glow lit up ten metres of piping ahead of them; the sonic screwdriver in action.

'I know you don't need it, with that impressive artificial eye of yours, but I like to see what I'm stepping in.'

The Doctor looked carefully at the piping as he started forward. It was constructed of ribbed black plastic, in fifteen metre lengths. Decades of use had caused silt to accumulate in the lowest part of the ribbing, filled also with water, and both would be toxic and radioactive. The air felt musty, dank, and reeked of bitter chemicals.

Not the front-door, or an access anyone would willingly choose. They moved on, until the shrinking circle of light denoting the entrance vanished from view entirely and they moved in a small pocket of light, darkness ahead and behind. Once they passed the brittle, discoloured bones of a small animal that had died in the pipe.

The first check came when they encountered a heavy-gauge wire mesh that came from the top to within a hand's breadth of the bottom of the pipe. Dried, stringy mosses and weeds were caught up on the far side.

'Time for a sip,' declared the Doctor, taking two bottles out of his rucksack. He was careful to choose the single red-capped one for himself. 'Sodium hydroxide,' he explained to Petros, before taking a long swallow.

'Bleach?' replied the Ellenikan, aghast. 'You're drinking bleach!'

'Yup. Helps my body to flush chemical poisons out.'

'I'll stick to Aitch-Two-Oh, thanks.'

'Humans are generally advised to,' said the Doctor, with a wink. Next he used the sonic screwdriver on a high setting to oscillate free several wire strands from the rim of the mesh. Using this as an improvised hand-hold, he pulled hard at the mesh, twisted it loose along part of it's circumference and then sprang the whole thing free.

After an hour longer, he let Petros lead the way and turned the screwdriver off to allow it to recharge. On they plodded, the bitter chemical stink staying with them and the air getting ever more humid.

Suddenly the Ellenikan stopped dead in his tracks, causing the Doctor to bump into him.

'Careful. You need to turn your little stick of tricks on. Stand next to me – no! Don't move any further forward.'

The steady blue light revealed a rectangular gap in the pipe's floor, fully across the width and at least three metres long. The far side stood slightly clear of water, due to the downward angle of the structure. Neither of them could judge how deep the water lay.

'A deliberate obstacle?' guessed Petros.

'Noooooo. No. I think it's a sump. They dug a hole to collect any large object that managed to get into the pipe and get washed down. No telling how deep it is.'

Too long to jump and without any toeholds thanks to the curving walls, it seemed their only option was to swim across the stagnant waters. That is, until Petros noticed a ripple on the surface.

'Did you see that?' he asked, uncertainly. The Doctor was already taking his boots off in order to lace them together and hang them round his neck.

'What?'

'There, in the water. Something made it ripple.'

'Oh! That's interesting! No wind or precipitation to make waves. Neither of us has dipped our lily-white toes in. No ground movement.'

Petros stared at the turbid water with suspicion. He didn't know what kind of organism might have adapted to living in a toxic sewer sump and felt disinclined to discover by going for a swim.

'I could shoot holes in the pipe's roof, give us handholds to swing across on,' he suggested. His travelling companion mused for a second and then nodded.

'Cover your ears.'

The weapon fired explosive energy bolts that knocked big holes into the plastic, bringing down showers of earth. They waited for the ringing in their ears to die down, and for the molten plastic to cool off before the Doctor tried first. His lanky frame dangled, knees bent, over the still waters as he swung from handhold to handhold. The holes had been staggered in alternate lines to make reaching for them easier and he got almost to the other side before anything unusual happened.

With a swish, a dead-white tendril lashed up from the waters at the flailing feet only just clear of the surface. The suspicious Ellenikan was even quicker, shooting the tendril apart in a geyser of slime and steam. He didn't wait for the Doctor to reach solid plastic, jumping for handholds and swinging across in a manner that recalled his long-passed basic training.

The Doctor paused long enough in putting his boots back on to nod thanks to Petros, and direct a curious glance at the water, now still and calm again.

'Strange. Whatever's in there can't have much to feed on, can it? I wonder if it was left there as a sentry of sorts. Perhaps it lies dormant until prey arrives and then -'

'Come on, Doctor. Bothering with scientific enquiry at a time like this,' sighed the other man.

Their journey continued, in darkness now that the screwdriver had been turned off. Time meant nothing down in the reeking plastic pipe, their progress interrupted by another metal grille. This one was made of sterner stuff than the previous version, and it took both men wrestling with it's unseated edge to spring it entirely free and allow passage.

Then, hours later, another sump blocked their way. Petros didn't waste time, throwing in a grenade that sent a fountain of frothing waste down the pipe, interspersed with big, pallid chunks of toothed tentacles. After that the water level dropped sufficiently for them to tiptoe along the edge of the sump to higher, drier plastic. Once again silent, they plodded on, and both noticed a slight irritation in their mouths and windpipe when they breathed. The symptoms became more pronounced over time, until Petros stopped the Doctor with a restraining arm.

'Is the air getting poisonous?'

In mute reply, The Doctor licked a finger and held it aloft. Then he plucked a single hair from his scalp, held it between thumb and forefinger and stared at it intently.

'Nope,' he stated. 'There's a passage of air within the pipe, from the aquifer layer to outside via where we're standing. Any fumes are getting concentrated in the diameter – come on, we need to find that open aquifer soon!'

By the time they reached a steeper gradient, with the pipe angling more towards the vertical, Petros felt as if his nose had been dusted with pepper, and his windpipe ached with each breath; his one organic eye watered copiously. The movement of air could be felt, rustling over skin and clothing in a gentle stream.

The last section of pipe became fully vertical, which is when the ribbing served both men as hand- and footholds. Dried silt on the top of each horizontal ledge formed by the ribs helped them to grip the smooth plastic or neither would have succeeded. Even so, it took ten minutes of immense effort against streaming eyes, running noses and burning lungs before they heaved themselves over the lip of the pipe.

Immediately the concentration of fumes decreased. Petros stood up on slimy rock to look around, and saw a vision both breathtaking and foreboding.

All around, for perhaps kilometres in every direction, a narrow strata in the rock had been emptied of water. The ceiling stood no more than a few metres above his head, crusted in vari-coloured deposits. At ground level, the uneven floor rose and fell, with countless pools glimmering with flourescent light – yellow, green, blue, orange. In fact there was enough light for him to turn off the IR function in his artificial eye. The lights danced madly, casting weird illumination and shadow over the ill-discerned walls.

'Beautiful. And dangerous,' mused the Doctor. 'That's radio-luminescence from decaying isotopes. I hate to think what the background count down here is.'

The other man remained silent, looking at the stone ceiling just above them. If there had been a draft, where was the air getting in?

'It'll be a narrow pipe extending below the ceiling. Hopefully big enough to crawl up. Let's split up to cover more ground,' said the Doctor, guessing wrongly at what Petros sought.

Over an hour elapsed before they discovered a section of metal piping projecting from a concave arch in the roof of the stone vault. The Doctor rolled his eyes in relief; the diameter had to be at least a metre, comfortably enough to wedge oneself inside and inch upwards.

'I can't jump high enough to reach that. Even if a great tall streak like you stood on my shoulders, you'd never get inside – that's bare, smooth metal. No purchase.'

'O ye of little faith,' muttered the Time Lord. 'Improvisation, Petros, is the mark of an agile mind.'

Casting about, he stamped on the ground, then stamped harder, splitting the rock. Getting down to inspect his handiwork, he looked back up to Petros with a grin.

'Cracking!'

He then set to with the sonic screwdriver. With five minutes careful work he had split a long slab of stone away from the bedrock beneath, easily the size of a family tabletop. The stone slab weighed so much he needed Petros to carry it and position it underneath the drainage pipe.

'Oh! A ladder of stone! Ah, you are cunning as a fox, Doctor!'

The rattle and clatter of splintering, friable rocks were the first sounds the underground chamber had ever witnessed, creating impossible echoes that rebounded from wall to wall for whole minutes at a time. In fact the echoing clatter carried on unceasingly even when the pair took a rest for five minutes, which made the hairs on Petros' neck stand up in warning. He looked wordlessly at his companion, who put one finger to his lips, pointing.

A faint glow shone from the ceiling kilometres away. Whilst Petros watched, uncertain of exactly what he was watching, a shower of sparks fell from ceiling to floor.

'Good job it's far off. Any closer and they might have heard us working.'

'Yes, but what is it?'

'At a guess, the reason why there was such a draft. The Cormellettes above are working on one of the drainage pipes so the valves are open to the surface.'

'Hmm,' said Petros, non-committally.

'Come on, back to rock-splitting. I know you're pumped up on microbots but I'd rather not risk your health any longer than needed.'

Petros had cause to thank the Doctor's careful structuring of the stone cairn. Left to himself, he'd just have thrown the stones into as big a heap as possible; his companion insisted on laying out a gradually tapering structure that resembled a small pyramid. Stable and easily climbed, and which gave them only half a metre to the drainage pipe.

Experience and skill at building a pyramidal structure like that, mused the Ellenikan, and a time-traveller. He couldn't have – could he?

Going first, the Doctor discovered to his relief – again – that the drainage pipe went up to the surface at an angle of forty five degrees. Steep, yes, but not particularly difficult.

'I can tell what you're thinking. No. I did drop in at Cheops on occasionally - '

Progress was slow, since both men had to wedge themselves in the pipe to avoid sliding backwards on the slippery surface. The Doctor's long overcoat managed to get in the way of them both, leading to several muted curses from Petros.

'The legends – not that I'm an expert – they say that the Gallifreyans were a very "hands-off" race,' grunted Petros, trying to distract himself from the effort of not sliding into the cavern below.

'Fat lot of good it did them!' snapped the Doctor in reply. 'Since I'm the only one left I get to make up the rules myself.'

Recognising genuine pain in both tone and body posture, Petros wisely refrained from any more comments.

On they inched. Gradually the flaring kaliedoscopic illumination from below died away and the old familiar darkness from the plastic pipe returned. Petros activated his laser eye and once again saw the world in shades of red, from glaring scarlet to palest pink. Since the world at present consisted of an oval pipe blocked by the figure of the Doctor and his overcoat, the Ellenikan turned his IR off.

Without warning, progress halted. Before Petros could speak he heard an urgent hiss from his companion.

'What?' he whispered.

'Valve assembly. I'm going to take it apart. Take the bits from me and slide them down the pipe.'

Various pieces of metal were passed to Petros, who obligingly slid them down the drainage pipe. Not thrown, slid: the less noise the better. Thrown material could make enough noise to warrant an investigation from the Cormellettes doing work on that other piping. When the ergonomically-shaped internal valve blades were passed down, Petros paused. He brushed fingertips over the carbon-laminate structures, reached a decision and acted accordingly.

'Bingo! Let's get moving. Watch out for sharp edges.'

The drainage pipe's diameter narrowed thanks to the internal flanges that had secured the valves, and made squeezing past a little more difficult than previously. Thanks to desperation, determination and fat-free physiques, they managed to get through with only minor bruising.

Once past that barrier the drainage pipe began to lower towards the horizontal, whilst also broadening and flattening. It descended from a metre until both men were grovelling on the floor under a lowering roof.

'Inverse limbo. Get ready to discard more structural metal. Ayah hallahi!' grated the Doctor, his words followed by a dull scraping and a high, metallic ping. Petros took charge of a half-metre of rigid metal rod, then another, and another, until he had a whole collection in his hands. He pitched them backwards, consigning them to echoes as they bounced off the sides of the plastic tunnelling.

Crawling forward, both men emerged from darkness into more darkness.

'Night. Good. Timed it right,' grinned the Doctor, standing upright, stretching. Petros swept the area, saw nobody and went into a set of exercises to get cramps out of his muscles.

'Now we're here, you'd better pose as my prisoner. Doctor?'

The Time Lord stood looking away to the east, twisting on his heels as if judging orientation and distance. With every motion his overcoat swung heavily.

'What's the matter?'

Recalling himself, the Doctor spun round on his heels.

'Oh – maybe nothing.' He pursed his lips. 'Maybe something.' That underground activity, the sparks and noise, that they witnessed earlier lay in the direction of the city centre, and on a fairly direct line to Power Tower. Strange that the Cormellettes were dismantling their radioactive relic at a time when all their engineers and technicians would be expected to be working on relocating the force barrier.

No, he decided. More than strange. _Sinister_. The Initiate would be frantically trying to get their repellent barrier up and running, the sooner the better. Any delay meant vulnerability to roving lunatics out to kill. Why divert their finite resources into dismantling an obsolete starship?

A possibility sprang to mind, one hideous in it's implication.

'Change of plan,' he snapped. 'Follow me.' He set off at a frantic pace, one learnt from Pheidippides.


	19. Chapter 19

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Martha and Spiros both felt they were champing at the bit. Unusually, the young woman didn't have to explain the idiom; Spiros' family being in the bloodlines business, he was well-used to horses.

'Inside. Safe. Not-in-danger,' he explained to her when she expressed her verbal chafing.

'I know that!' she replied, testily. 'It's just unfair to allow the Doctor to risk everything while we sit in here and play backgammon. And why do you want to get out if it's so unsafe?'

'Elder brother at risk. Scabby Initiate rascals needing payback.'

Their warning about not straying had been unequivocal. Human nature being what it is, the Doctor would have been better advised to lock the TARDIS doors and relieve Martha of her key. However, their eventual transgression was not entirely their fault.

Root cause of the problem lay in the greatly increased mercenary presence across the nearby stream. The Initiate wanted their money's-worth from the hired soldiery, which meant looking busy. By early afternoon a pair of modular plastic bridges had been erected across the stream and patrols of soldiers crossed to the near bank, taking an interest in the surrounding countryside.

Not good, recognised both young people. Martha felt anxious because how would the Doctor ever regain sanctuary in the TARDIS if the mercenaries were present on this bank in strength? Spiros worried that the roving patrols would uncover their hiding place, unconvinced that the humble wooden police-box would resist anything more lethal than an axe.

Around late afternoon, a squat wheeled vehicle painted in camouflage colours drove slowly over the larger bridge on giant balloon tyres. It featured a clutch of aerials, a folded scanning dish and a pennant on the nearside mudguard. Another similar vehicle minus the telemetry gear followed it.

'Command truck, with escort,' guessed Spiros. He swore. 'Which is heading right for us.'

When two hundred metres distant the lead vehicle stopped. The second truck swung round and disgorged a dozen soldiers carrying small arms and what looked, to Martha, like a baroque drainpipe. These men spread out and advanced slowly towards the pine copse. A shout from one man brought them to a halt whilst they used hand-held superscopes and IR snouts to check the trees. Whatever they discovered caused a fret; half the men dropped prone and covered their comrades, who advanced in a rush to the nearest trees.

Martha played with the scanner controls and zoomed in on one mercenary peering cautiously round a trunk. His mouth sagged in comic surprise, then he looked up and she could see him mouthing the word "Police". A shout brought the other half-dozen men jogging up to the copse edge. Having gotten over his surprise, the first mercenary pointed at the TARDIS and then at the man carrying the lethal drainpipe.

Spiros recognised the weapon for what it was; a missile tube. He witnessed it being levelled at the scanner, then a flash of light as the warhead launched. His hands tightened on the central rotor –

- and then the picture on the scanner changed impossibly quickly. Gone were the mercenaries and the pine copse. Instead he looked out at a gently waving field of corn, in the twilight of Beta since Alpha had set hours ago.

'Hey! Blood of the Virgin, what happened!'

His companion shook her head, temporarily at a loss to explain. The external picture obviously meant several hours had passed, from afternoon to near-night. Rotating the scanner merely showed huge fields of corn, interspersed with hedges that interrupted their view.

Dimly, Martha remembered the Doctor mentioning months ago as an aside that the TARDIS didn't like hanging around in an actively hostile environment; in the slightly creepy way he had of hinting that the timeship had sentience, he'd implied it would evacuate itself to more accommodating quarters. He had an acronym for it, of course, which she couldn't remember.

'We've made an emergency jump in time and space. Problem is, I don't know where or when.'

Spiros looked at his watch, making Martha snort in amused exasperation.

'That's no good! We're entirely separate from the normal continuum.'

'Well – can't you read a dial or get a date from somewhere?' asked Spiros, more uneasy than he cared to admit or show. How did a fragile wooden box shrug off a point-blank missile impact?

'The stuff in here is calibrated in "Base Gallifreyan Primary" according to the Doctor and I have no idea how to read it. He's not keen on humans flitting about in time.'

All she knew for certain was that they were still on Hargreave's Fall, thanks to Beta. Not much of a consolation, given the size of the planet.

'Let me sum this up. We don't know where we are. We don't know when we are. And because we might be beyond the borders of Cormelle we daren't leave this – this - '

'TARDIS.' Martha suddenly came to a realisation. 'We're not at risk just yet. Remember, the Initiate are still trying to get their new huge empathic repulsor into action.'

'They _were_,' corrected Spiros. 'We could be sitting in a landscape two weeks later with that signal being broadcast around the clock.'

Martha looked at him, at first dismissively, then with calculation, then with horror. The young man saw all these expressions flit across her face and felt bound to comment.

'What? What did I say?'

'Remember all those people working on Power Tower? At the time I believed they were going to imprison the Doctor in there. Now – well, I think you're right. With the Doctor on the loose, not to mention us, the Initiate can't take the risk that we'll tell everybody what's really going on. People would hang them from the nearest lamp-post. So they're going to blast out that Breakdown signal using Power Tower to boost it and send it out twenty-four-seven. They can't use their normal power supply so they resort to their antique generator.'

'Thirty-five-seven,' corrected Spiros, automatically, before realising the implications of Martha's train of thought. 'What!'

A Breakdown signal broadcast thirty five hours per day for months on end would depopulate the planet; not even the naturally-immune would survive the anarchic chaos such a broadcast would create. Cormelle would be left the sole inheritor of Hargreave's Fall after having killed over twenty million people. The repulsor wouldn't be needed after that, since there wouldn't be anyone left to use it on. If the Doctor, Martha and himself were eliminated then the truth need never emerge and the Initiate would have won.

'I plan to take the Hippocratic Oath when I qualify,' stated Martha, talking half to herself, half to Spiros. 'I can't do that if I don't act now, if I don't stop such a slaughter.' She leaned forward on the time rotor, almost overwhelmed at the bleak end her reasoning had led to.

The Ellenikan heard without paying attention. He also felt the burden of conscience, not the least because his eldest brother was astray in the benighted and embattled hinterlands of Hargreave's Fall. He couldn't go back to the family hale and hearty without Petros, nor with a mindless, raging monster that used to be Petros.

'I don't know about your wonderful advanced TARDIS engineering, but back on Ellenika we tend to have a back-stop in our technology and computers.'

Martha stopped the images of murdered millions dancing in front of her consciousness.

'What are you talking about?'

'A back-stop. A reference point established at an earlier date. If my office computer suddenly went completely wrong, I'd install the previous back-stop. I might lose a day's data, but that's all.'

The idiom was unfamiliar but the intent was plain. Back-stop back-up.

'You mean – you mean where the TARDIS has been, physically been, in time and space?'

'Just so. There's this site, wherever it might be. Then there's the Hospital, and before that the parking spaces next to the airport. Your TARDIS ought to have those locations stored in it's memory, as back-stops.'

Struck by this simple profundity, Martha began to dash from scanner to scanner, checking monitors and readouts, telltales and displays, until interrupted by Spiros' outstretched palm.

'Let's work this logically, okay?' and he made that strange gesture with his right hand. Martha took a deep breath and smacked fist into palm.

'Calm, rational and logical. Check! Just like Dana Scully.'

Having taken a metaphorical step back, she went over the controls on the time rotor, whilst Spiros checked the scanner display to see if it had a memory component. Neither came up with anything. Somewhat nervously, Martha cleared her throat whilst Spiros continued to fiddle with various sliders that operated the scanner.

'Er – TARDIS? Hello? We need to find the exact spatial locations of two previous landing sites.'

To a sardonic snort from Spiros, the scanner display altered to show a metric graph, with ten figured readouts, in two parallel columns.

'Oh!' said both at the same time. Coincidence or serendipity? Spiros gestured at the rotor.

'Do your meddling.'

The night-time streets of Cormelle lay exposed under phosphor-meson lights, giving off a pearly glow that softened the sharp outlines of the two mercenaries striding along.

A closer look from any passer-by would have changed the "two mercenaries" to "one mercenary and prisoner", since the first man strode along at a cracking pace, both hands clasped behind his neck and half a metre ahead of an unslung weapon in the second man's hands. The image of a soldier-for-hire would have been shattered by the long, lumpy greatcoat worn by the lanky pace-setter.

'What is this new plan?' huffed Petros. They had already passed a mercenary patrol, one that regarded them with suspicion but let them pass. Otherwise the streets were empty of people. Petros suspected that the Initiate had been lying about roving Breakdown victims to keep witnesses indoors and away from any evidence of evil-doing. Also, the Doctor could move at a near-sprint endlessly whilst mere humans needed to rest every so often. Almost an Olympian.

'Sub-critical fission. A fizzle, I think that's what nuclear technicians called it. Come on, keep up!'

Boots slapping on the paving, they hastened to cover in the shadows of one of the Light Engineering factories that flanked Power Tower. Atypically, there were security shutters over the factory doors and windows, the result of recent thefts and vandalism (actually Spiros and Martha at work). Typically, the shutters brought down to close the factory were unlocked (whilst Cormellettes might understand the ethos of security, it's execution was a different matter) and both men were inside within seconds. Petros leaned against a pillar and gasped for breath, wracked by a stitch.

'So – we - blow - them – up?' he wheezed.

Standing erect, with a curvature of the spine that argued he could have carried on jogging into the low hundreds of hours, the Doctor winced melodramatically.

'Nahhhhh. We clobber them with science. I didn't spend weeks here half a millennium ago helping to save their planet, only to let their stupid grandkids manage an epic Fail.'

Inevitably this utterance needed to be translated into English. Once it had been, Petros found new common ground. He grinned, in what a wolf would have recognised as a fellow, feral expression.

'Let the younger generation not embarrass us, eh, Doctor? Okay, what are our sinister plans?'

Engale soldered another connection into place on the rejigged circuitry panel, finishing the job and sliding the module back into it's bus. This was the last of one-hundred and forty four panels, fitted into different busses across the bulk of Number Sixteen, Power Tower. The obsolete old lady had undergone a major facelift, with technicians renovating the severed power and coolant piping, bringing the piles back up to a base level that they hadn't seen in a century. Then it would take at least ten days of non-stop testing, making sure that Cormelle wouldn't suffer a fission melt-down, until the Initiate judged their power plant ready for operations.

The work was sweaty and tiring, claustrophobic and – if he dared admit it – altogether without a sensible reason. Sweaty and claustrophobic because he worked in a multi-layered paper suit that interleaved activated layers of boron and carbon and lead, all the better to work in a fatally radioactive environment. Tiring because he'd been working nineteen hours without a break. The reason _why_ he pushed to the back of his mind. Years ago friends of his had asked questions, and disappeared. When they reappeared they were subtly different, declaring that they were now working for the benefit of the whole community as members of the Initiate, because they'd "seen the light".

He snorted. The Initiate, yeah, right. You didn't dare break wind in public or some hidden, sneaking, un-knowable Initiate member would report you, never mind criticise what the Initiate did. Now, thanks to the Initiate, they were rebuilding Power Tower at a frantic pace in order to provide power to the newly-increased perimeter that the force barrier ran along. And why had they suddenly imported mercenaries into Cormelle? Oh, that would be "risk from Breakdown victims".

If he could have spat in disgust, he would have done so. The sealed suit meant that any such gesture would merely inconvenience himself, so he refrained and cursed instead, for three minutes without repetition.

At twenty hours-worth of labouring his watch pinged feebly, barely audible through the suit's layers. The supposedly indestructible timepiece was older than he was, and it was definitely wearing out – another victim of aging, irreplacable technology.

Engale carefully switched his soldering torch off, placed it in the cradle, stretched and clambered down the service ladder to the inner walkway. He rotated through the temporary plastic airlock and stepped outside, where he could release the zipper and breath fresh air. A couple of other technicians stood there, enjoying their break. They soon returned inside, leaving him alone in the cool, dark night.

A man vaguely similar to that supposed legend-come-to-life, Doctor John Smith, came striding out of the gloom beyond Number Sixteen and walked straight up to a startled Engale.

'Do you realise you've got a multi-legged creature on your shoulder?' said the stranger. Engale turned to look at his left shoulder, and then felt a massive, blood-red seizure take him –

'Is he dead?' asked Petros, when the Doctor dragged a besuited body into the Light Engineering factory.

'Nah. Unconscious. Vulcan Nerve Pinch.' A twisted smile passed over the other man's features. 'Cheesy old Star Trek line, always wanted to use it.'

Removing the protective suit without damaging it proved tricky and would have been near-impossible without Petros' help. Five minutes later the Doctor stood in total anonymity, giving a thumbs-up to his assistant.

'Fmmf smmff tmmm tmmm hmmm hppp' said the suit. Petros leaned in closer. 'Find something to tie him up with.'

Mere minutes later the suit returned, dragging another sprawling technician in a protective suit. Petros stood back whilst the Doctor tied up their second victim and presented another suit to the Ellenikan. Within half an hour they had successfully decoyed, ambushed and outright assaulted all the other technicians within Power Tower, now lying gagged and bound in the factory.

'Right. I'm off to commit careful sabotage. When I come out of the hull, I want you to shoot a single round into the very top of that retaining dome in order to make a small hole.'

Petros nodded and removed the suit hood to be able to aim. The other suit turned back.

'Don't shoot anyone. Not even if I get taken prisoner. _Especially_ not if I get taken prisoner!'

Ensuring that the fusion plant blew up without taking most of the city-state with it was not an easy thing to manage, all the more so if one didn't want to get blown up either. The Doctor had to circle the three nuclear piles on rickety service ladders that led to the fragile and narrow walkway ledge, disconnecting coolant tubes to the bottom pile. His reasoning was simple; when that one went pop, it would damage the other two beyond repair, unless the Cormellettes were willing to wait in excess of twenty thousand years for the radioactivity to return to safe levels. Nor, if he was honest, was he entirely familiar with this nuclear plant design. Still, the broad principles of fusion technology were pretty universal. These would have an inbuilt safety factor, attempting to bleed off excess heat by venting via the empty or emptying coolant tubes. That would rapidly fail to lower temperature, and the core would heat up until it failed catastrophically.

But not _too_ catastrophically. Which meant only severing every other coolant inflow, to ensure an even failure of the pile. Having two other multi-ton object sitting on the bottom pile would have a tamping and damping effect, preventing the near-catastrophe from getting out of hand. That meant closing off twenty-four inflow tubes, and shuffling round the narrow welded walkway to access them, sweat obscuring the suit's facemask. There ought to be enough time to perform the sabotage and get away, given even a little luck.

Away to the left, a brief, intense hissing caught the Doctor's attention. He paused at inflow number twenty-two, looked over and caught a glimpse of bright feathery purple fumes being released from a safety-valve.

Awoogah! Flourine plasma! he recognised, with a start of worry. The emergency venting had already started before he'd even completed his shutdown. He shuffled along, taking care to keep well clear of anything that looked like a valve, then shut down inflow twenty-three. Another metre-long plume of vapour shot out from the pile only metres away.

Damn! The fumes from that will boil my suit away! he realised. Radiation he could soak up like sunshine. Flourine plasma, on the other hand, would turn him into a six-foot two firework until he was only a greasy remnant.

Inflow twenty-four chose that moment to behave stubbornly. It took a blast from the sonic screwdriver to release it and close off the inlet, a fiddly job when the device was inside his suit and in an overcoat pocket and needed to be handled through a deadening glove.

This time a whole series of vents let off plasma, half a dozen to each side of him. The Doctor jumped delicately backwards no more than six inches and dropped twenty feet, hitting the floor plates hard. He jumped along the narrow inner space between pile support and hull, trying to hit the floor as little as possible – raving fumes were already percolating upwards from the metal as flourine droplets coalesced from the air above and dissolved whatever they touched. The plastic airlock already had ragged holes in it, and began to collapse gently around him as he ducked inside and unsealed the outer door. A frantic spring outside and he began to tear the suit away and outwards, keeping the material away from him. Great white spots formed on the viewplate, sending a foul chemical reek into his nose and lungs in a combination of acrid flourine and melting paper. With a violent lurch threw he the hood off and to the ground, where it developed spreading holes until it resembled an art deco colander.

BANG! went the dome overhead. Sparks flew up and outwards from a hole that suddenly appeared on the retaining dome, and a ghostly spray of vapour began to dance slowly upwards from the breach.

Well done Petros, gasped the Doctor to himself. A mixture of chemicals had numbed his throat and bitten into his lungs. He leant over and took deep breaths.

'You! What in the seven holy hell's do you think you're doing!' bellowed a voice well-suited to parade grounds. Clattering boots came over the paved plaza towards him and the Time Lord looked up to see a patrol of mercenaries looming.

'What's that hole?' asked one, punching the Doctor underneath the ribs when there wasn't an immediate answer. Another soldier poked at the still-disintegrating shreds of the protective paper suit, coughing at the chemical smoke that coiled up from it.

'Spread out and search. There's more than one of these spies,' ordered a grizzled soldier with rank badges on his shoulders. 'Cuff him.'

They did, not gently. The prisoner whispered under his breath, hoping that Petros wouldn't react if discovered –

A loud and violent scuffle took place in the factory, thankfully without gunshots. When a battered Petros appeared in ankle- and wrist-cuffs, three equally-battered looking mercenaries came with him.

'There's a load of technies tied up yonder,' said one soldier, spitting blood. 'Herival stayed to untie them, best he can with a broken arm.'

The officer stared at Petros, who coolly returned the look.

'What are you up to?' asked the mercenary.

'Sightseeing.'

'Sabotage.'

The Doctor's frank admission bought enough time for a released technician to stumble over the plaza towards them, gazing with horror at the holed retaining dome of Power Tower.

'That's a pile meltdown!' gurgled the technician. 'Radioactive coolant!'

On cue, rooftop sensors began to trip and one by one sirens started to shriek and howl across the city-state.

This type of event was completely novel to the mercenaries. The technies knew of it thanks to the recent fall-out from Northcoping's nuclear missile, and annual practice for extreme events: therefore, they panicked.

'Get to the Hospital!' yelled several. 'We've been irradiated!' shouted others. 'Run!' shouted one man, vanishing into the night (Engale, being cautious and untrusting).

Thus it was that a mob of mercenaries, technicians and two men, one wearing uniform, the other a greatcoat, burst into the Hospital during the small hours of the morning. The Security guards newly-appointed didn't feel brave enough to stop a score of desperate men. By the time they screwed up their courage, the external screens had descended, which meant anyone within the Hospital – or any other building – was stuck there for the duration.

Furious beyond expression, Doctor Zollern came stamping into the High Maintenance Suite to see the two cuffed prisoners. More by accident than design, the suite didn't have any occupants present to witness either the doctor's fury or the dangerously well-informed prisoners, only the two Security guards set to overwatch.

'Do you think we don't guard essential installations?' he grated. 'From outsiders like you?'

Nopalis had also come to see the prisoners since he'd been in to see Zollern about dialysis. He shook his head.

'You've already been in a highly-sensitive area. We take precautions against repeat offenders like you or how else would we catch you?'

Idly – okay, not so idly – he wondered what condition these two's kidneys were in. Zollern hadn't been very hopeful about dialysis, because their medical kit was so old, and now here were four nice new kidneys sitting in a couple of strangers, all ready for the taking. After all, they were only outsiders.

Without warning, the outer secure door to the High Maintenance Suite swung open. In came two more Security Guards, escorting two more prisoners. Zollern's jaw dropped in a mixture of disbelief and anxiety. Nopalis, unfamiliar with the intruders, looked between his consultant's face and the two men, one wearing camouflage fatigues, the other a long, strange garment resembling a dress split up the front.

'Petros!' blurted one of the original prisoners.

'Doctor!' exclaimed the other, rather guiltily.

'Spiros!' exclaimed Petros, delightedly, before realising that he needed to be considerably firmer. 'You're in big trouble, little brother.'

'Martha. Why do all my companions manage to get captured?' asked the Doctor, rhetorically.

The Initiate members should have interrupted this tete-a-tete but incredulity stayed their hand, if only briefly.

'TheInitiateweregoingtousePowerTowertosendouttheBreakdownEffectpermanentlyandwehadtowarnyou - ' dashed out Martha.

'I know. Sorted!' said the Doctor, and winked.

'You – shut up!' shouted Zollern, red-faced with anger.

'Heart-attack candidate,' stage-whispered the Doctor, indicating the surgeon with a thumb. 'Should drink less caffeine.'

'You four – you can leave,' ordered Nopalis, referring to the Security Guards, none of whom were Initiate – yet. They'd probably be next in the Icebox.

A distant, muted yet penetrating thud came vibrating up the flooring, making everyone in the suite wobble momentarily. The Doctor relaxed visibly; his sabotage had come to fruition without destroying the city.

'What was that? A nuke?' asked Nopalis. He looked worried. Nuclear weapons had been considered expended decades ago and for them to suddenly start appearing now was bad news.

'In a manner of speaking,' boasted the Doctor. 'That was good old Number Sixteen suffering a fizzle. A sub-decaton explosion. Your Power Tower is now three feet deep in radioactive liquid flourine.'

This proved to be too much for Zollern. His face practically glowed with rage as he swept up a foot-long scalpel from a medical trolley and darted at the Gallifreyan.

'I'll gut you like a trout!' he snarled, raising the blade in a savage sweep.

'Leave his kidneys alone!' added Nopalis, ghoulishly.

Before the disembowelling blow could land, the suite lit up with a dazzling scarlet flash that tinted everyone's eyes and left great purple weals in their field of vision.

Doctor Zollern stupidly regarded the stump of forearm where he had clutched the scalpel, then at the twitching limb that lay at his feet, scalpel lost. The hideous smell of cooked meat pervaded the suite before the stricken surgeon collapsed in shock.

Nopalis cawed in fear, bolting from the room.

'That really wasn't necessary,' grated the Doctor, looking at Petros, who returned the look with interest.

'What, you're suddenly scalpel-proof?' he replied.

Martha looked at both with bewilderment, not knowing what on earth – or Hargreave's Fall - had happened.

'Laser eye,' said Spiros. 'Gives vision in infra-red, ultra-violet, motion-sensitive and if all else fails, it's a one-shot cutting laser.'

'It would have been easier to shoot him in the head,' said Petros, waspishly. 'I remind you, Doctor, that I don't take life on a whim.'

With a kick that yielded a groan from Zollern, the Doctor nodded.

'He'll live. With probable ninety-five per cent function in that forearm, if they get it attached in time.' He looked up at Petros and grinned. 'Sorry! Too used to humans who shoot first and ask questions never.'

'Humans - ' began Spiros. The sentence never ended, thanks to a volley of anaesthetic gas grenades thrown into the suite from hands safely beyond the threshold.


	20. Chapter 20

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY

When the Doctor roused himself, unkind hands were already dragging him across the floor of the High Maintenance Suite. Playing possum, he remained limp and so witnessed the opening of the anonymous door into the cryo-suite beyond HMS. Having deduced correctly what the room's other function was, he wasn't at all surprised when one of the people carrying him walked over to an unoccupied cryo-cabinet. After they tapped out a sequence on the diagnostic keyboard the whole cabinet slowly began to swing upwards, hinged at one end of it's base.

Martha came to, barely, as this occurred, and looked at the set of low steps leading further downwards in the space revealed by the fake cryo-cabinet. Wordlessly, she stared at the Doctor.

It made sense to him. Those unfortunates chosen to become the Initiate would be operated on next door in the HMS, then taken via this secret entrance into what had to be the control centre for the empathic repulsor. All out of sight. Nicely discreet. Nobody around to witness entry or exit. Plus it would explain that missing area on hospital floorplans.

Rough hands dragged him upright, then down the hard-edged concrete steps and into a big, low chamber that gleamed with dozens of bright, flourescent lights. The overall air was of wildly-misplaced cheeriness.

Ah, yes, there it was, the empathic repulsor technology: a collection of worn computer consoles, monitors, processor banks and incoming power lines. Utterly anonymous and unremarkable for such an engine of genocide.

'Hello Frankenstein,' he mumbled. An open fist hit the back of his neck.

'Shut up!' hissed an angry voice.

'Don't beat him. He needs to be in full possession of his senses,' declaimed a pompous voice.

Martha felt as if cotton wool had been used to pad her brain. She looked over at the equipment standing around the walls, then at the half-dozen Initiate who'd dragged them down here. She didn't recognise any of them. To begin with, she wondered if they were going to be simply executed. Time passed without any incident and she rejected that as an option, until more Initiate members began to filter into the underground chamber. Only in ones and twos, yet without pause for over an hour, until more than sixty were gathered and the chamber began to look crowded, which is when she felt uncomfortably certain that executions were on the agenda, merely delayed for the time being until what looked like a committee of judgement had assembled.

Strangely enough, the Doctor didn't look worried. He had that air of deceptive calm about him which could mean either resignation or internal preparation for action. Not only that, he managed a cheeky wink at her that brought a faint smile to her face; really, he was – incorrigible. Textbook definition of the word.

She looked over at Petros, whose laser eye had been hastily covered with reflective gold foil. His human eye glinted angrily at the Initiate.

'Enough are here assembled. Let the judgement begin,' intoned that pompous voice again.

'Get on with it before you bore me to death,' growled Petros, getting a kick from nearby Initiates. At a directive nod from the Doctor, Spiros retaliated by kicking back, catching one specific kicker behind the knee and pitching the man to the floor, where the back of his head hit with a cringe-inducing crack. Fists were raised in reprisal -

'Enough!' shouted a familiar voice. Grace? guessed Martha. 'Get them into the middle.' She paused as another Initiate whispered in her ear. 'And get Ian to the HMS.'

More hard handling brought them into the middle of a circle formed by the Initiate. Dozens of unsympathetic eyes glared unforgivingly at them.

The Doctor looked back, calculatingly. This was all going splendidly! He couldn't have asked for a better situation. Just what he wanted.

At a guess, the assembled ranks of Initiate were here to make a jury judgement on the four interlopers, which would surely be a capital one. After all, they had prevented the Breakdown Effect from being broadcast via Power Tower permanently, in such a manner that the streets outside were deserted. Well, deserted in terms of normal citizens. The Initiate would have been summoning each other through their broadcast implants, breaking seals on buildings and trying to minimise exposure to fallout.

'Do you transgressors know why you are here?' asked one of the spectators – Marvon, recognised by both the Doctor and Martha.

'Smack on bottom and allowed to go?' tried Spiros, sarcastically. Stony silence greeted his wit.

'Waste of time, Spiros,' cautioned the Doctor. 'Gestalt cyborg mentality.' A few Initiate frowned at this description, looking between each other uncertainly.

'You are here to be judged,' intoned Marvon. 'Judged in light of your sabotage. Judged in light of your sinister and unwelcome effect on the body politic of Cormelle - '

Petros yawned hugely. Martha nearly laughed at the Ellenikan's blatant mockery, which drew ferocious glares from the Initiate and caused Marvon to hesitate.

' – the body politic of Cormelle. We have never before considered capital resort against transgressors, but your actions go so far beyond the boundary of reasonable behaviour that this is the sole verdict to be considered.'

'Kangaroo court, death sentence, yadda yadda, getonwithit,' intoned the Doctor. More than one Initiate member wondered if it weren't time to use a gag on the verbose and disrespectful alien. There was no more kicking, not after the knee-splitting reprisal of Spiros.

A silent shudder ran around the assembled citizens, running back and forward for the space of a dozen heartbeats.

Brancuso broadcast consultation, recognised the Doctor. Undoubtedly a capital verdict, which would equally undoubtedly trigger a response from one of his companions as per his fifth plan.

Mexican Wave of death-penalty, judged Martha.

'Death. By unanimous accord,' stated Marvon in the manner of a wrestling match referee.

'Just like that!' snapped Martha. 'We don't get to defend ourselves?' Her tone was sharp, hostile yet unfazed by the prospect of death; she wanted the proper forms of civilised behaviour to be adhered to.

Yay Martha! enthused the Doctor, silently.

'Do you have a legally-qualified mentor to put your case?' asked Marvon, politely and with a suppressed sneer.

'Yes. Me,' replied the Doctor. This assertive response caused a pause in the collective Initiate judgement. 'I hold qualifications in forensic rhetoric from a polity.'

Perfectly true, even if said qualifications dated back three thousand years to the Athens of antiquity.

'Oh,' said Marvon. Long seconds ticked by. 'Ah.' Another silent tic ran across the assembled Initiate. 'You may plead your case - ' he began.

'Brilliant!' said the Doctor.

' - after which you will be executed.'

'I'll talk really, really slowly, then,' drawled the Time Lord as he got to his feet. He darted a silent glance at Petros.

'I'm not going to plead for_ our_ lives,' began the Doctor. 'I'm going to plead for_ yours_.'

A statement like this got everyone's attention.

'If you will voluntarily remove those nasty little antennae in your necks, then I'll go easy on you. This is your second warning. I won't give you another.'

He turned slowly, encompassing the whole circle of onlooking Initiate. A few sneers were the only reply.

'Mockery will gain you nothing,' warned Grace. 'Have you finished?'

'Can't wait for the capital sentence, eh? Listen to yourselves! Parotting the same behaviour as your victims! Don't you understand? _you are suffering from the Breakdown Effect yourselves!_'

A moment of stunned incredulity caused silence amongst the Initiate, not to mention the other three prisoners.

'Don't be ridiculous!' snorted Marvon. 'The signal is broadcast outwards from the repulsor. We are entirely unaffected.'

'Heisenberg would love you! Humour me for a minute, why don't you. None of you have bothered to work out why the so-called repulsor turned into a mind-mincing machine, have you?'

'Fait accomplit,' smugly replied Marvon. 'Once done, it couldn't be undone.'

The Doctor rocked back on his heels. This was straying far from a defence of the prisoners and might get halted at any moment.

'That's it? That's your answer? Fifty million dead as a result and all you can say is "fait accomplit"!'

'We used the very latest paradigms and algorithms. The best human research could provide,' replied another Initiate, huffily. 'Nobody could have predicted things going so badly wrong.'

'Oh, look beyond your noses!' snapped the Doctor. 'The very latest data from Earth, eh?'

Mute nods from the Initiate.

The Doctor pointed up at the ceiling.

'Hargreave's Fall isn't Earth!' he barked, getting more than simple attention. 'Why things went wrong: you may have noticed two suns in the sky, but I doubt it after five hundred years – rather becomes part of the background, doesn't it? Alf and Bert, Alpha and Beta, completely different radiation profile from good old Sol, different magnetosphere, different solar wind, different different different. Only enough to alter the effect of your repulsor very slightly, but that difference plays havoc with the human mind.'

Most, but not all, of the Initiate looked surprised at this revelation. A few guilty looks were to be seen amongst the more scientific members.

'What's done can't be undone,' announced Grace, primly. 'Has your defence finished?'

'No. You all saw your egomanial little empire under threat from me and my colleagues, so you planned to hit Hargreave's Fall with a permanent broadcast of that signal – behaviour typical of those suffering from the Breakdown Effect. Hostility to outsiders, tribal cohesion, unreasoning aggression.'

For the first time a few Initiate began to look uneasy, casting glances back and forth. Marvon, taking refuge in his status as an engineer, decided to take the issue up.

'Coincidental nonsense! The signal does not affect us! I told you before - '

'Of course it affects you!' and genuine anger could be heard in the Doctor's tone. 'Those Brancuso broadcasters sitting in your necks make excellent antennae for picking up the signal.' He continued before Marvon could interrupt. 'Because your practice of having new members of the Initiate trot down here after their implant operation to participate in sending out the broadcast didn't just implicate them in perpetual genocide.'

Marvon began to look worried. Grace, muttering to another member, looked angry. The Doctor plunged on.

'Feedback, Marvon, feedback from the unshielded equipment you use. Your machinery here replicates the Breakdown broadcast. At only a fraction of a per cent of the very lowest level you send out, but thanks to the aerials in your necks, still enough to inflict the Breakdown Effect on your minds. And with repetition it becomes more marked still.'

'I don't care!' snapped Grace, proving the Doctor's point. 'You are sentenced to death!' She pointed behind him. 'Execute the sentence!'

'How appropriate,' murmured the Doctor. In an incredibly swift and boneless motion he threw off his handcuffs, then flicked his right wrist, causing the inner lining of his sleeve to rip. A Bowden cable dangled from the sleeve, which he scooped up.

Standing erect, with frightening sincerity, he stared at Grace and pressed the stud at the end of the Bowden cable.

'I warned you.'

None of the Initiate paid attention, as they were all instantly screaming with pain, tearing at their necks, running blindly around the chamber and into each other. One by one they ran shrieking up the steps to the cryo suite upstairs.

Petros stared at the now-empty chamber, then at the Doctor.

'Alright. You work miracles. Care to explain _how_?'

Martha spoke up instead.

'We nicked a box of those Branco-whatsits, Spiros and I. The Doctor had me sew them into the lining of his coat – experience with suturing, he said - and he wired them altogether.'

Strolling over to the computers along the wall, the Doctor pulled out his sonic screwdriver and prepared to get to work. Recalling himself, he remembered to release the three other prisoners. Petros pulled a turbine blade from the side of his boot.

'Allow me,' he said, and began the process of trashing every piece of electrical equipment within reach.

'So what did happen to the Initiate?' asked Martha.

'Massive overload,' explained the Doctor, running a hand through his hair. 'All those hundred and forty four broadcasters broadcasting at once, blew their minds, probably literally. I rather suspect their sine function has inverted – sorry, that means that they cannot tolerate being in the vicinity of any Brancuso Broadcaster, even the ones not down here.'

He went back to the computer equipment, helping Petros by taking the fascias off panelling. Between the four of them, they celebrated a reprieve from death by smashing, grinding, burning and bashing the repulsor equipment into irreperable rubbish.

Eventually, short-circuiting and electrical fires forced them out of the basement chamber, up into the cryo-suite, where Martha suspiciously checked each coffin.

'I can't believe it. Under our noses all the time. And how long did you know about the truth?' she directed at her mentor.

'Oh – er – quite a while, really.' He tried a winning smile. 'I've had experience with self-sustaining electronic enslavement before, you see.'

'And you worked out that you needed to have the Initiate all together so you could zap them?' asked Spiros.

'That goes back to you and that box of broadcast implants you stole. More of a long-term plan than anything else.'

They crossed into the High Maintenance Suite, which had three occupants: Ian Brinklove, Doctor Zollern and a petrified male nurse. The dozy, post-operative surgeon had his right arm swathed in metallic foil, bio-feedback sensors, support struts and piping; the nurse hid behind the bedstead.

'Doctor,' croaked the doctor.

'Yes?'

'Yes?'

'Not you, Martha. What is it, Doctor Zollern?'

The other man frowned, looked at his regrowing arm, back at the new visitors in his suite and shook his head.

'Damn. For the first time in years, I feel – I'm not sure what it is.'

Pity, unmasked by alien physiology, prompted the Gallifreyan.

'It's called "freedom", Doctor Zollern. Please remember this moment for future reference. Freedom from a self-imposed electronic slavery. No more monkey-on-your-back.'

Ian Brinklove lay comatose, various wires and sensors attached to him.

'There's an implant in their necks that needs removing,' Martha told the nurse. 'Local anaesthetic only. Get it done soon as possible.'

There were other, frightened members of the hospital to deal with before they reached the lobby.

'Go see Doctor Zollern' said the Doctor, repeatedly, to the hapless and panic-stricken. Spiros stopped him before they reached the lobby area and the human receptionist.

'What is happening?'

'At a guess, I'd say that Doctor Zollern survived my treachery thanks to being heavily sedated and completely unconscious. Ian had severe concussion and was also unconscious. The only Initiate to come through with brains intact. Given his saintly role when the Breakdown started and before the Initiate developed I'm quite glad, really. And Ian was rather helpful whilst his brain was still his own.'

Martha slumped into one of the chipped plastic chairs in the lobby, one of dozens thrown into dissarray when the screaming mob of Initiate came stampeding by. She looked at the Doctor, wondering how long he'd planned all of this, and how much was planning, and how much was seat-of-the-pants flying made to look like planning, and whether she or anyone else would get an answer.

'Are you alright?' he asked, suddenly and soundlessly there at her shoulder, asking in a tone of voice that made her insides quiver alarmingly.

'Oh! Oh, yes, yes, I'm fine. Fine,' she replied, with that hasty smile, the Smile of Insincerity her mum had lectured about. Whilst quiet on the surface, her heart beat faster than it ought to. 'Fine.'

The Doctor looked at her with appreciation, a warmth tinged with regret.

'Thanks for helping here. I couldn't have managed it without you and your medical background. I just regret putting you through weeks of hell in the playground of the Breakdown Effect. You might have become another statistic here on the Fall.'

The conversation ended abruptly there.

Petros indicated the shattered cover beyond the hospital lobby, where desperate Initiate had torn the protection apart with their bare hands to get away from each other.

'What happens to them?'

A shrug from the Doctor.

'Scattered to the four corners. Demented and unable to stand being within kilometres of each other.'

Petros chewed his lip in silence. The Doctor, without using telepathy, knew the other man's thoughts.

'Yes, pretty ruthless. I did warn them, twice, what I'd do to them for killing fifty million people and trying to finish off twenty two million more. Anyhow, Red Star will be establishing a permanent presence here now that the Breakdown's permanently gone and doubtless they'll pick up the Initiate who survive.'

(That figure wouldn't be very high; once the truth about who had been responsible for the Breakdown Effect got around, and it would get around because the Doctor would ensure it did, no Initiate's life would be worth the steam from a cup of coffee).

The unspoken irony of this appealed to Petros, and also took his mind off chastising his younger brother, who tried to remain quietly in the background. Martha went to look for surgical tape to re-seal the entrance cover, not wanting any radioactive contamination to get blown into the hospital. Not long after the gigantic water-flushing exercise began again, and within hours people were able to emerge into the streets in the pale light of first dawn.

Martha looked at Alpha and felt troubled. All this death and destruction, all brought about by a simple oversight concerning Alpha, and Beta. No monsters, no aliens, no evil cyborgs from the edge of the universe trying to take over the galaxy, merely human nature degraded into self-propagating evil intent. She sighed and felt hundreds of years old, borne down by the weight of events.

An arm slipped over her shoulder and the Doctor walked her outside.

'Come on. No radiation risk by now, and a bit of lovely fresh air will do you good.'

Outside, on the vast stone-flagged plaza, small clusters of citizens were gathering to discuss the night's events; most of them were bag-and-brushers, sent out to clear up any lesser radioactive debris not washed away. Teams of paper-suited technicians swarmed over the remains of Power Tower, now entirely covered with a mountain of boron and charcoal, and any large fragments were being recovered by antique autonomic robots dating from the original landing.

One cleaner recognised the Doctor and came trotting over: Lizabet, one of the group he'd welcomed into Cormelle ages ago.

'It is true, then? The Initiate are all gone?'

'Yes indeedy. Gone as far as their legs and stamina will carry them.'

She looked around.

'Things are going to change, then. With nobody to spy upon them, people can say what they want.'

'Things are going to change a lot more than that,' agreed the Doctor. 'Since the Initiate were responsible for continuing the Breakdown Effect all along. No more Breakdown, which means behaviour will gradually become less extreme, which means interstellar trade will open up again. No mercenaries, no more warfare – well, given a couple of years.'

Lizabet rested her chin on her plastic brush. Yes. The suspicion that the Initiate were up to mysterious and underhand and devious matters thanks to their anonymity and ubiquity – that had worried her. Cormelle the sanctuary seemed more like Cormelle the work-camp whilst the Initiate were running things.

It would take generations but the planet would recover, now that it didn't have to accommodate annual flare-ups in violence. Mercenaries wouldn't bother coming back because there wouldn't be any employment for them. Children born from this day on would never undergo the killing tribal mania of their elders, and those same elders would never suffer annual relapses. Within a generation the psyche of everyone on the Fall would either be normal or nearly approaching it.

'You don't look very joyful,' commented Martha, giving the Time Lord a gentle nudge. They were back at the hardstands, waiting for the first official starship into Hargreaves Fall in an age.

'Hm? No, don't suppose I am. If I'd only checked back here a few decades ago all this could have been prevented. I really ought to install Outlook in the TARDIS and book in reviews. What else have I forgotten to check up on?'

'Go back over things in your diary,' suggested Martha. The Doctor winced.

'Ouch! Over seven hundred yearsworth of entries?'

Any more helpful suggestions were forestalled by the downward descent of _Mona_, Captain Dowd's ship arriving from Netrosphere after a long explanation from the Doctor earlier in the day. Nobody else but the Time Lord's testimony would have persuaded the officer to risk his ship, sanity and crew to pick up two passengers: Petros and Spiros. The Vendrakos family would pay premium rates to get their youngest son home intact. Or mostly intact, since Petros had probably inflicted a good few kicks to the buttocks as a down-payment on his punishment to come.

The captain came down the exit ramp, escorted by another familiar face: Doctor Ross, who led a surgical team down the ramp, towing medical trailers behind them.

'Any problems?' asked the Doctor.

'None at all,' admitted Captain Dowd. 'Your smoke signal helped to guide us in.'

Martha rolled her eyes and looked at her companion, who tried to look innocent. The "smoke signal" came from the ex-offices of the Initiate, doused in fuels and set alight to destroy all traces of repulsor technology in plan or schematic form. Volunteers from the city-state had helped to create the inferno and if any Initiate had been stupid enough to remain present, they would have been added to the bonfire.

Waving his arm – the one bearing a scar – Doctor Ross led his team over the plaza to the hospital.

'Setting up here for a month or two. Then we'll shuttle outwards,' he called. A great deal of his youthful zest seemed to have returned.

Two figures scampered up the ramp into the belly of the ship – Petros and Spiros, waving goodbye as they went.

'All loose ends tied up, fairly happy ending in sight. Let's go home,' announced the Doctor.

'Sounds like a plan!' grinned Martha. 'Now, about your plan to - '

The Doctor sighed in amused exasperation and strode off at high speed, pursued by an eager Martha.

CODA

Slamming into and breaking past the thorny shrubs that blocked his path, Marvon overbalanced and pitched headlong down the long grassy slope, hitting a couple of hard stones on the way and bruising his ribs. Fortunately his tattered clothing remained mostly intact, or he'd be feeling the weather even more.

The clanging, stabbing, dizzying pains that had run around in his head for hours were beginning to recede by the time he stumbled upright. He now knew they meant he'd gone beyond range of another Initiate member, who was almost certainly running in the opposite direction as fast as possible. That, or dead. At first, after the blind agony of that dreadful day in the underground chamber, he didn't understand what the debilitating mental torment meant.

Now, he knew. Intimately. For two weeks solid he'd been travelling on foot, without any aim or direction or goal, merely trying to put distance between himself and any other Initiate. Anyone who came out of the repulsor chamber and tried to communicate with another member learnt the hard way that they needed to stay far apart.

That wasn't all, either. His thoughts ranged from rare clarity to muddy incoherence, when they boiled down to "get away, get away".

He didn't dare approach any settlement or township or even groups of people, because The Doctor would have told the truth about the repulsor and people would kill him on sight. They might do that anyway thanks to the after-effects of Breakdown.

'Get away with it, get away with it,' he mumbled to himself, in a repetitive mantra. 'We didn't get away with it. We didn't, we didn't.'

How bitterly he now regretted being an Initiate! Had he a little more intellect or insight, or even conscience, he might have regretted inflicting mental torment on other people for no more than transient political reasons, all the more since he now suffered what they had undergone.

Ah! Those trees over there looked like wild orange. An orchard gone to seed. Fruit. Food. A careful scan of the land in all directions revealed only scattered woods. No buildings, nor people.

Rubbing his empty belly, Marvon lurched onwards. It took him an hour to get close enough to the trees to see movement inside the small, dense copse.

'A big white thing,' he muttered, aware that his mind was running sluggishly again. 'Big and white. Thing.'

The instant he spoke the movement stopped. Seconds passed before a Splenacosaurus burst from the copse, champing it's jaws. Seconds later it stood over the cooling body of the last Initiate member left alive on Hargreave's Fall.

Marvon's death was even more ironic than he knew.

The splenacosaur went back to the dark of the copse, where it guarded a clutch of a dozen eggs – the reason for it's unprovoked and savage attack. A couple of eggs had already hatched, and infant "fishbellies" were scavenging across the loam. Their mother nudged them aside and settled back on the nest. Already her carnivorous behaviour had muted to that of an omnivore. Her offspring, those that survived, would give birth to splenacosaurs no more dangerous than a donkey. In time, and in step with the slow recovery of the human population, splenacosaurs would occupy the niche vacated by the Fall's hoppers – those very organisms they had evolved from in the first place, thanks to both Breakdown and consequent mutagens in the environment.

The Doctor would have been impressed at this resolution: Recovery After Conflict. The very reason he had arrived on the Fall in the first place.


End file.
